Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for managing a viral invitational content campaign. Invitational content is delivered with a user interface element that, upon selection, transmits a forwarding request to the content delivery server. The content delivery server generates a link with a unique identifier and creates a forwarding entry that includes the unique identifier and identifies the item of invitational content. The link is returned in response to the forwarding request. Upon selection of the link, a request including the unique identifier is transmitted to the content delivery server which accesses the corresponding forwarding entry to return the corresponding item of invitational content. A viral campaign dictates a target spend range and throttling methods are utilized to manage the spend. Invitational content forwarding, delivery cost, and content selection are variable to manage the spend. Calculated metrics are also used to manage spend.