• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, April 3, 2012

Viral video is a hit or, mostly, a miss proposition. But socially distributed video, by contrast, is continuing to deliver results for many brands. The latest marketer to make a play in social video is Puma, which is enjoying promising results from a recently launched 90-second video that’s already racked up more than one million views.

The video — sort of like a short film — focuses on the benefits of living life by going out and hanging out with friends rather than watching reality TV on the couch. Social video distribution platform Sharethrough distributed the videos across the Web in what it calls native advertising placements, meaning “well-integrated placements on social publisher sites that are choice-based and sold on engagement-based pricing.” That strategy can drive earned media through paid media.

The result of the campaign was a higher than average rate of social engagement and more than 8,300 total social engagements in the first three weeks of the March campaign, said Chris Schreiber, VP of Communications at Sharethrough. The campaign ran on sites such as such as Buzzfeed and The Awl.

Sharethrough measures social engagement through actions viewers may take after watching the video in its video player. Viewers can take actions such as tweeting, copying the URL, LinkedIn Share, and Facebook Like. Sharethrough then optimizes the campaign based on where the highest levels of social activity are coming from.