IMRaD Report

Alexander Masada Corey

11/3/15

RHET:1030:0055

Effectiveness of Social Media Advertising

 

Abstract

            Advertising has been thoroughly studied by many research teams and one of the most important parts of advertising is the ability to reach the intended audience. However, with the rise of social media, a new type of advertising has been created, advertising to a target audience through posts made by other social media users. A survey was designed collected information on how many college students use social media, and how they are exposed to advertising through their use of social media. The study of this survey revealed that all students who participated in it use social media at least once daily. Participants were also asked about the use of ad-blocking software and it was found that 42% of participants do use ad-blocking software. Based on these initial findings, it already appears that peer advertising through social media has the ability to reach a part of the target audience that would otherwise be out of reach.

Introduction

Studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of advertising strategies. Advertising is the most important aspect of connecting business and consumer. A recent development in how consumers spend their time is social media. As a means of communication, social media has become a platform for advertising. This is ‘peer’ advertising done by users of social media which integrates advertising social media. Research exists on the effectiveness of traditional advertising but not peer advertising. The question then is how effective is peer advertising in comparison to traditional advertising. This comparison is made by considering the efficiency of advertising.

            To compare different traditional advertising and peer advertising, consider the purpose of advertising. From a study conducted by Booth, the impact of advertising is to “act as a brandbuilding tool and/or a reminder” (Booth). To show a large number of advertisements to create a brand or remind consumers of the company. The important idea for analyzing the effectiveness of peer advertising is whether peer advertising can meet these expectations. Additionally, traditional advertisement must reach those interested in a product. The concept associated with this is that, “the key to successful marketing can be summed up by the STP strategy—that is, segmentation, targeting, and positioning” (Cornell). Targeting is the best way to efficiently advertise. Traditional advertising follows this, but users of social media don’t follow the same logic. Therefore, the question is how does peer advertising meet a target?

Methods

Participants:

21 students participated in this survey. Each student was currently enrolled at the University of Iowa at the time they took the survey. Each student who responded to the survey indicated daily use of some form of social media.

Procedure:

Participants were either asked to take the survey in class or asked personally outside of class to participate in the survey. By spreading the survey in this manner, it was ensured that those who answered the survey were current students at the University of Iowa. Each student was allowed to respond to the survey only once in order to ensure that they could not overly influence the results of this survey.

Data Analysis:

Data from this survey was analyzed in order to determine the percentage of students who use social media and compared to that number, how many of them recognized an exposure to peer advertising in their use of social media. In addition to this comparison, the number of students using ad-blocking software and also the number of students who felt impacted by peer advertising were compared both to one another and also to the overall number of students who were exposed to peer advertising and also the number of students on social media. By comparing all of these results to one another side by side on a bar graph, it is easier to quickly gain an understanding of how these influences size up to one another.

Results

           

Figure 1: Results of survey on Social Media Advertising

            This chart shows the results of different survey questions that were posed to students and shows the success of peer advertising in reaching the audience of social media users. Of the twenty one students surveyed, only one student said that they were not exposed to peer advertising. In addition to this demonstration of effectiveness in reaching the target audience, the results of the question about the use of an ad-blocker when compared to the results about whether students felt influenced by a social media ad indicates that even students who use an ad-blocker can be influenced by a social media ad. This is demonstrated by the fact that while nine students claim to use an ad-blocker, only seven students said that they were in no way influenced by a social media advertisement.

Discussion

            This survey indicates both that advertising on social media is an effective way to reach a target audience and also that advertising on social media can reach an audience that is otherwise more or less unreachable through traditional advertisements. Of the twenty one students who took the survey, all of whom use social media daily, twenty agreed that they had been reached in some way by peer advertising. This is a 95% success rate in peer advertising reaching the entire audience of the survey, a relatively high number considering the age of social media. In addition to proving to be effective in simply reaching an audience, this study also indicates that social media advertising also inherently reaches their target market and may hold the key to unlocking audiences that actively avoid advertisements through the use of an ad-blocker.

Social media advertising reaches the target market in away unique from most other ads because rather than conducting research on the best channel or website to advertise on, advertisements given through social media take advantage of the idea that people are in contact with others on social media that share similar interests. The sharing of interests therefore inherently targets an advertisements ideal demographic. This is because those who feel that something is relevant enough to them that they would want to post it to show others what they think, to enter a prize pool, etc. then those in contact with them through social media should also share similar interests. This lends an efficiency to social media advertising that in fact goes beyond what traditional advertisements are capable of because advertising via social media takes advantage of groups and associations we form naturally rather than working to make the distinction.

To address the topic of those who use ad-blocker, we must consider that ad-blockers are designed to filter out traditional online advertisements. This again gives an advantage to social media advertising because it can bypass ad-blocker and also influence the audience it reached beyond an ad-blocker. Traditional advertisements not only are unable to reach past an ad-blocker, but because there is no data on ads available that are blocked because consumers never see them, peer advertising is automatically reaching the target audience better in this area as well. Overall, the results of this survey indicate that peer advertising on social media is an important and powerful tool that can reach consumers with a high success rate and can even go beyond boundaries faced by traditional online advertising strategies. This is shown by the advantages demonstrated in both reaching a target market and also in going beyond limitations of traditional advertising.

            Possible problems with this survey include a lack of recognition of what constitutes peer advertising on social media, as the survey did not provide diverse and specific examples of peer advertising before asking students if they had been influenced by it. Self-awareness also played a large part in this survey, as questions were asked that require the student answering them to be able to recognize when they themselves had been influenced. Additionally, this survey did not focus on one social media site in particular which could result in a less specific target audience because each social media site encourages a different type of user to use their platform.

            Future research on this topic could be more reliable by showing examples of peer advertising alongside the question about whether or not the person taking the survey had been exposed to peer advertising. By making sure the definition of peer advertising is clear to those participating in the study, a more reliable data set can be taken from a survey. In addition to making sure that the data is more reliable, future studies could also focus more on relationship between the use of ad-blocker and how those users who have an ad-blocker installed reacted or were influenced by advertising on social media. By connecting the data in this way, the efficiency of peer advertising can be analyzed in a new way which would allow for a better understanding of how efficient peer advertising is at reaching an audience that chooses to restrict the access of traditional advertisement.

Works Cited

Manchanda, P., Dube, J., Goh, K., & Chintagunta, P. (2006, February 1). The Effect of Banner Advertising on Internet Purchasing. Retrieved November 3, 2015.

Lynn, M. (2011). Segmenting and Targeting Your Market: Strategies and Limitations. Retrieved November 3, 2015.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 1

Survey

Question 1 : Do you use some sort of social media regularly?

            Yes / No

Question 2 : Do you use an ad-blocking software?

            Yes / No

Question 3: How often do you check social media throughout the day?

            1-5 Times

5-10 Times

10 or more times

Question 4 : On social media how often do you see brands or company names in posts made by contacts on social media?

            Never / Infrequently / Frequently

Question 5 : Do you feel that these posts resulted in you purchasing a product made by a company?

            Yes / No

Question 6 : Do you feel that seeing a company or brand name through social media exposure serves as a reminder or the motivation to buy a product?

            Motivation

            Reminder

            Neither