Hybrid Viral Marketing

Thanks to Jason Kottke for pointing me to a new paper by Duncan Watts that explores the idea of "big seed marketing."

Basically, the idea is that viral marketing campaigns bolstered by large mainstream media advertising campaigns can create an escalating conversion effect that neither activity would catalyze on their own. The math behind the idea seems solid, and it reminds me of my recent PodCamp talk "What If Ads Were Content?"

The more ways people are able to share, keep, and annotate ads online -- and off -- the more effective those ads could become.