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
Your abstract is effective and allows the reader to be able to understand what happened throughout the study and what the results were without reading any farther. Make sure that your abstract under 150 words though. You write in a formal tone which makes the paper sound more professional and is the correct tone to be for an IMRaD style paper.
ReplyDeleteAfter making your introduction more concise in class I believe that is is now a very strong intro. It lays out the topic and gives previous/background knowledge of the topic you are researching, as well as gives other research that has been done on this topic.
For your methods sections, overall it is pretty solid. The only recommendation I have is to cut down the data analysis section a little bit only because I think that it can be said in a much shorter version. Don't necessarily say by comparing two things, what you found out, rather, say you compared two things which lead to your results. Then, in your results section you can talk about how comparing two things lead to your findings.
Your discussion section is for sure very detailed. In fact, it may be a little lengthy. Keep in mind, at the end this paper has to be double spaced so with this paper double spaced it may be too long. I would say keep the first paragraph because that is summarizing your finding which is the most important but maybe cut down the second paragraph. Again, keep the idea of concise writing in mind.
In your appendix, take out the answer choices because you only need the questions that were in your survey not the answers as well.
Overall, you paper was very strong, just try and cut a few things down and make them more concise and your paper will be even better than it already is.