Microsoft vomit ad more than half of campaign's views

Vomit throws up viral views.

At least that is the conclusion of the strangely anal examiners of viral video at Visible Measures.

Perhaps some of you may have avoided the splashback from the Internet Explorer 8 vomit ad, featuring a husband, a wife, and former Superman Dean Cain.

The ad was slipped online and was pulled shortly afterward, as some people thought watching a housewife throwing up in the kitchen after seeing something untoward on her husband's laptop was not entirely edifying.

However, the Visible Measurers have offered some pleasantly risible measurements.

Apparently, 57 percent of all the views enjoyed by the various ads in the IE8 "Browse Better" campaign came solely from the vomit ad.

There were four spots in the campaign, which means that the other three might have suffered from a lack of open-mouthed self-expression.

Visible Measures surmises that before the "Oh, My God, I'm Gonna Puke!" ad was pulled, enthusiasts of yellow projectile liquid copied it and reposted it to their blogs, their friends and, who knows, their mothers.

The company then offered this view of the numbers: "We're left to wonder whether or not this was part of the plan all along: publish a controversial though on-message ad, create some heated dialogue, apologize for offending customers, take it down, and drive big viewership numbers."

Such faithless cynics, those Visible Measurers.