Hilco Streambank and IPmetrics® Intellectual Property Consulting have been retained to market U.S. Patent No.8,185,431 (the “Viral Media Patent” or the “ViralSmart™ Marketing” technology).

The Viral Media Patent embodies a system and method for (a) predicting whether media content will go viral and (b) pairing advertising with media that is predicted to go viral
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Background:
Online advertising is a $39.5 billion market in the United States. The participants in the market are advertisers, ad networks, and content providers. In some cases, content providers also run their own ad networks, and in some cases they also advertise their own affiliated entities.
Current research conducted by numerous companies is focused on predicting which new content will “go viral” by virtue of repeated likes, tweets, forwards, tinyurl links, and other methods of distribution. As content providers become more sophisticated in their ability to identify this “high popularity” content it will give them a new way to sell advertising.

Additionally, the latest trend in maximizing CPC and CPM values is to more specifically target advertising to specific demographic groups in order to maximize the likelihood of clicks, or the value of impressions, or both.

The Patent:
On March 16, 2012, the USPTO issued Patent No. 8,185,431 for a method to:

1. Predict the popularity of online media among key demographics based on early access rates; and,
2. Automatically pair advertising with online media that is predicted to become popular.

The Viral Media Patent is being offered for sale and/or license and combines "smart advertising" with "viral marketing." Smart advertising is the practice of targeting advertising to key demographics. Viral marketing is the act of creating advertisements that will be shared and seen by as broad an audience as possible. The Inventor has successfully integrated these two elements to create the “ViralSmart™ Marketing” platform.
This highly-valuable asset is a cutting-edge opportunity for content providers, advertising agencies and web-based advertising platforms to capitalize on the marketing opportunities presented by creating algorithms for the early identification of future viral online media content (including videos, news articles, blogs, comment strings, etcetera). The ViralSmart™ Marketing platform allows for the pre-sell of advertising associated with viral content, thus allowing for the generation of significant ad revenue premiums.
For more information please see the attached prospectus and feel free to contact me directly. Hilco Streambank and IPmetrics will conduct the direct marketing of the Viral Media Patent over the next six to eight six weeks, with a transaction expected to be completed by August 2012.