As video-based social media roar their way into our lives, marketers have seen great potential in viral video ads — they are now everywhere. They have become a popular way not just for corporations but for all individuals to promote their unique identities, projects, and great causes. This research paper focuses on investigating how viral ads gained popularity. Previous researches depict one or a few possible viral aspects, like content quality or emotions. These views are highly limited in today’s complex and interconnected web landscape. Instead, this research intends to present a comprehensive view of the systematic reasons behind virality with the self-designed “Möbius strip of virality.” It synthesizes information from recent peer-reviewed research articles, professional books, and real-world viral ad cases to illustrate how the two crucial actions, “seeing” and “sharing,” and two critical processes, “infecting” and “spreading,” help ads go viral. This research paper argues and concludes that ads get viral when they repeatedly circle through actions and processes on the Möbius strip of virality, “infecting” the viewer after being “seen,” and “spreading” across weaker social ties on social platforms after the viewers decides to “share.” This research is significant both to help individuals or corporations understand how to market their works or products and to retrospectively help filter out propaganda or virally spread online ads that contain mis/dis/malinformation.

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Keywords: viral ads, virality, advertisements, social media, social network, platforms, spreading, sharing.