viral.app

Account tracking

Track the accounts and videos that power your analytics, Creator Hub reporting, and payout workflows.

Tracking is the first step in viral.app. Before you review analytics or calculate Creator Hub payouts, add the accounts and videos that viral.app needs to follow.

Open Tracking Options to track creator accounts, add individual videos, and control when data refreshes.

Tracking Options is where you manage tracked accounts, individual videos, sync status, hashtag filters, exclusions, and tracking limits.

Track accounts

Use account tracking when you want viral.app to follow a creator profile over time. Account tracking works well for ongoing creator programs, ambassador accounts, competitor monitoring, and campaigns where creators publish more than one video.

To add an account:

  1. Open Tracking Options.
  2. Select Track Account.
  3. Choose the platform and enter the account username or URL.
  4. Set the tracking limit for the account.
  5. Add project, creator, or hashtag settings when they apply.
The Track Accounts dialog accepts usernames or profile URLs and lets you choose a tracking limit before processing starts.

The tracking limit controls how many of the account's latest videos viral.app keeps active for analytics. Smaller limits keep the account focused on recent content. Higher limits are useful when you need a longer history.

If your plan includes unlimited video tracking, videos discovered through tracked accounts do not consume your Tracked videos plan limit. Individually tracked videos still count as tracked videos.

How tracking limits use plan capacity

Video tracking plan usage is based on the limit you choose, not the number of videos the account has posted. If you set an account to track its latest 100 videos, 100 counts against your Tracked videos plan limit. That is true even if the account has only posted 10 videos so far.

To keep usage tight, you can lower account limits when they are higher than the number of relevant videos. Teams that do this often can automate limit updates through the API reference. If you need older videos to remain available after they leave active tracking, use historical data. If you want tracked accounts to be the main limit instead of per-account video slots, use unlimited video tracking.

Refresh schedule

viral.app refreshes tracked data on a schedule. Open Schedule to review or adjust refresh times for your workspace.

Scheduled refreshes use UTC. A refresh can take up to 60 minutes to finish after the scheduled start time. For daily reporting, we recommend at least one refresh late in the day, such as 21:00, 22:00, or 23:00 UTC. Plans with extra hourly sync slots can refresh as often as once per hour.

For videos, the scheduled refresh cadence also depends on how old the post is:

Video ageScheduled refresh cadence
Less than 60 daysEvery scheduled sync slot
60-119 daysEvery 2 days, at the workspace's first sync slot of the day
120+ daysEvery 7 days, at the workspace's first sync slot of the day

Use manual refresh when you need fresh data before the next scheduled sync. Manual refreshes can take up to 10 minutes. They use refresh credits based on the number of tracked videos refreshed.

Account refreshes use 1 credit for each block of 30 tracked videos, rounded up. Individual videos use 1 credit each. Unlimited account refreshes use 10 credits. See Extra credits for other billed extra usage.

Track individual videos

Use Individual Videos when you only need specific posts. This works well for one-off creator submissions, ad references, launch content, or posts that do not belong to a tracked creator account.

Individual videos bypass account-level hashtag filters because you choose the exact video to track. If a video fails to sync, use Retry sync from the videos table after you confirm the URL and platform are correct.

More tracking options

Unlimited video tracking

If your plan includes unlimited video tracking, videos discovered through tracked accounts do not consume the Tracked videos limit. In that setup, Tracked accounts becomes the main plan limit for account-discovered content.

Set an account to Unlimited when you want viral.app to track all videos for that account. Videos you add through individual video tracking still count against Tracked videos.

Stop tracking

Use Stop tracking when you no longer want viral.app to pick up new videos from an account, but you still want to keep the existing tracked videos and reporting history.

Stop tracking is available when your plan includes historical data, the data retention add-on available with Ultra plans and above.

Hashtag filters

Hashtag filters help you track only the posts that match a campaign or project. Add filters when a creator account publishes a mix of campaign and non-campaign content.

Use simple hashtag names, such as viralapp or summerlaunch. viral.app normalizes hashtag filters by removing the leading # and matching them consistently.

Hashtag filters affect account-tracked videos. They do not remove videos you add through individual video tracking.

Exclude videos

Use exclusions when a tracked account contains a post that does not belong in analytics. Excluded videos stay out of dashboards, exports, and campaign metrics while the account remains tracked.

You can remove an exclusion later. The video appears again after the next refresh if it still matches the account tracking settings.

What to do next

After you track the right accounts and videos, open Analytics Overview to review performance. If you run creator campaigns, add creators in Creator Hub and connect their tracked accounts to campaign records. For planning context, compare the UGC analytics overview with the campaign management workflow.

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