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"Unruly co-founder and co-CEO Sarah Wood explains which aspects of an ad are relevant when seeking widespread success online including the level of emotional intensity and the diversity and strength of users' social motivations.  Wood also dispels some of the misconceptions surrounding virality. "There's a myth around video success-which is if you get a million views or 5 million views, then you've got a successful video," Wood says. "All that view shows is how much you spent on the media. If you want to think and understand why people shared that video, and if it really has been a viral success where word of mouth played a key part, then you need to be measuring the shares." "

This year in viral video, advertisers either broke new ground or just got better at old concepts. But what is clear from this year's top 10 is how passion - for a company, brand or creative concept - continues to drive innovation in viral video advertising.  Here are the top 10 most innovative viral video ads of 2012.. 

"The fourth annual Viral Video Awards will be presented April 1 at Ad Age's Digital Conference in New York City. Now's your chance to help us decide who gets a VVA trophy. Up for voting are candidates for funniest viral campaign of the year. First, a word about the selection process: There are plenty of funny branded videos out there, but these were picked because they're both funny AND they performed really well, making us laugh and achieving a brand goal in the process."

"There is so much fake stuff on the Internet in any given week that we've grown of tired of debunking it all. Fake Twitter fights. Fake DHL ads. Amazing viral video? Nope - a Jimmy Kimmel stunt! In these heady Internet times, it's all too easy for a fictional story to gain traction in the span of a few hours. More perniciously, it's easy for news organizations to slap a sexy headline on a story, or pull the juiciest nugget from a study, and drop it on the Internet - forgetting that, in many cases, social-media users don't actually click through and read the whole thing. So rather than take down each and every undeservedly viral story that crosses our monitors each week, we're trying this out - a quick, once-a-week debunk of fake photos, misleading headlines and bad studies that you probably shouldn't share over the weekend. "

"Truth has never been an essential ingredient of viral content on the Internet. But in the stepped-up competition for readers, digital news sites are increasingly blurring the line between fact and fiction, and saying that it is all part of doing business in the rough-and-tumble world of online journalism."

"We've compiled a mage-list of 40 viral videos (in no particular order) that summarize life on the Internet in 2013. And even though some of the year's most watched YouTube videos were ads (Dove, WestJet, Kmart and Volvo) or music videos like Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball, we left those off to make room for some classics from the everyday man."

"A tear-jerking viral video, called "2012: What Brought Us Together," is making the rounds online. Posted to YouTube on Tuesday, the six-minute video is a montage of major moments over the past year, from silly to serious. Set to the music of This Will Destroy You's "The Mighty Rio Grande," It includes clips about Hurricane Sandy, KONY 2012, the Costa Concordia disaster and the suicide of Amanda Todd."

This year in viral video ads feels a lot like last year - many advertisers chose to evolve successful concepts and characters, such as Old Spice pairing Mustafa with Fabio for an old-fashioned Internet duel, and DC Shoes continuing Ken Block's hugely popular Gymkhana series.

"USA Today has looked for inspiration in the current crop of viral media darlings, BuzzFeed and Upworthy, for a sports section that mixes original and aggregated content with you-gotta-click-to-see-what-happens headlines.  "We looked at non-sports digital media properties that were doing it right - BuzzFeed, for example - and thought, what would the BuzzFeed of sports look like?"

"You just can't not click ... right? And millions of other people are clicking, too, making Upworthy one of the most popular sites of 2013 - and allowing its newer imitators to get really popular really fast."

"It started as a viral tweet and video clip and ended in a political firestorm."

"A suspended Twitter account appears to have help spread video of a controversial encounter between a group of Catholic school boys and a Native American elder."

"Yesterday, a video asking "What if guys and girls swapped roles at the bar?" went viral, skewering every part of the club-going experience. In the video's world, girls, rather than guys, end up waiting in line forever to get past the doorman, pressure men into taking shots, and harass guys with low-cut tops."

Ever since YouTube became a place where anyone could realistically become a celebrity, brands have been trying to figure out how and what makes a viral video. What's significant about this year's top-viewed ads is the fact that they have more of a web presence on YouTube than on TV.

"PARK CITY, Utah - Dove is debuting at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on Monday a short film that explores how social media is shaping the way the we perceive beauty. The 7-minute short film called Selfie follows a series of teenagers and their mothers who are asked to take self-images that highlight their insecurities about the way they look. In an experiment reminiscent of Dove's viral "beauty sketches" ad, the participants learn some of their disliked attributes are what others consider to be the most beautiful."

"Almost a year ago, Jeff Gordon teamed up with Pepsi Max to prank an unsuspecting car salesman. Gordon disguised himself and took the salesman along on a test drive, only to dangerously speed around town. The salesman's terrified reactions, and subsequent reaction to discovering it was a NASCAR driver all along, earned the Pepsi spot more than 40 million views on YouTube. But not everyone was so impressed by the viral video, mainly Jalopnik reporter Travis Okulski. Okulski was among the first to point out inconsistencies in the original ad, writing it off as a staged performance by several actors. Okulski's accusations apparently angered Gordon, who decided to seek revenge with a similar driving prank."

"Facebook's News Feed, a homepage built by our friends and organized by our clicks and likes, isn't really a "news" feed. It's an entertainment portal for stories that remind us of our lives and offer something like an emotional popper. In fact, news readers self-identify as a minority on Facebook: Fewer than half ever read "news" on the site, according to a 2013 Pew study, and just 10 percent of them go to Facebook to get the news on purpose, as opposed, say, being assaulted by a breaking news event when you're just scanning baby photos. To see this more clearly, let's compare the BuzzFeed network's most viral stories-i.e.: the stories that go biggest on Facebook-to the top stories on Twitter and the most-searched stories. First, here are the top stories on Twitter in 2013. It's a blend of news, like terrorist attacks and music shows, and evergreen silliness with Ryan Gosling and Kim Kardashian. "

"Did you hear about the "wolf" that was allegedly roaming the halls of a hotel in Sochi, Russia, during the Olympics? Turns out, it was a Jimmy Kimmel media prank, just like his viral prank last fall of the twerking girl who caught on fire."

"In fact, it's a common occurrence. In a recent example, Advertising Benchmark Index, a researcher that grades ad on 14 key performance indicators including awareness, message and call-to-action, found that although Kmart's "Ship My Pants" ad was a viral hit, relatively few consumers knew it was a Kmart ad. Gary Getto, ABX's president, says that similarly, when consumers see a white cat in an ad, they assume it's for Fancy Feast, the cat food brand, which uses a white cat as a mascot."

" Last year's list had seven spots that earned 1.2 million shares or more. This year's list has 14 such spots. But the top ad here earned 4.24 millions shares across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere, versus more than 10 million shares for last year's chart-topping Kony video."