Once, in middle school, we had to conduct a small, one-question survey of the class, and then write and present a speech on the results. Most other kids chose to do their survey questions on things like sports or video games or even Pokémon cards (yes, the nineties were sweet). For some reason I chose the question “do you like ad breaks on TV?” Weird kid, I know. Not surprisingly the results were completely against against ad breaks. Although one kid did say it was great for when he needed to grab a snack or go pee, which is a pretty fair rationale. Anyway, I guess the point I’m getting at is that I’ve always been interested in marketing. The way that regular people, like you and me, can convince other regular people to trade their hard-earned cash for something they didn’t realise they even wanted. It is, to me, a bizarre phenomenon.
So, ten or so
years later, when we were asked to conduct a social media survey in my College
Writing 108 class, I used an advertising theme once more. What I really wanted
to know was how effective people thought these social media advertisements
were. By combining everyone’s experiences with social media advertising I
thought I might get a sense of how accurately these advertisements were
targeted and how effective they were in getting a response.
My survey included
a class-distributed paper survey combined with asking my friends on Facebook. I
asked my humble participants whether they thought advertisements on social
media platforms were well targeted, i.e. a fair representation of their
interests, and how often, if ever, they clicked on these advertisements. My
results were fairly inconclusive; about half said the advertisements they saw
related to their interests and about half had clicked on advertisements in the
past. I didn’t want to conduct a larger survey; being a student my spare time
is spent on Facebook, not asking
questions about it. However I did conduct some secondary research to see what
other people had found. This
survey, by Ask Your Target Market (AYTM) found similar results. Only a
measly 4% of respondents said they often click on ads from social media sites,
but another 19.9% said they sometimes do, and 35.8% said they have done it at
least once. The remaining 40.3% have never clicked on social media
advertisements. AYTM actually went one step further and asked what makes these
users click on the advertisements. Results included a great deal (60%), a brand
name (40%), pictures (32.4%), or catchy text (26.7%).
The click-rate of
only about 60% seems to suggest that social media advertising is not as
targeted as it could be. Considering the amount of information we pour into
Facebook and Twitter every day, you would expect advertisements to be very
closely aligned with the targeted audience’s interests and subsequently a lot
more effective. Another
study, by Pivot, looked at opinions of social advertising from the flip side;
the organisation’s perspective. This study revealed that just 54% of marketers
are satisfied or very satisfied with their current social media marketing
efforts. Despite this, 60% said that social advertising will be very valuable
to them in the next two years.
Although I thought
my surveys were fairly inconclusive, they seem to represent the studies I found
quite well. Social media advertising does not appear to be perfectly targeted
right now, but the potential is widely recognised within the marketing
industry. For massive social media platforms such as Facebook to operate without
some sort of membership fee, they must have some form of paid advertising. This
is basic stuff I know. It’s like radio stations. Only, unlike radio stations,
social media has access to the information we post online, including our interests,
hobbies, locations, etc. which is invaluable to marketers. So naturally there
is a huge potential to use this information to target audiences that may want
to buy a specific product. As Eli Pariser discusses in his book The Filter Bubble, this access to
personal information has flung us into a world of internet personalisation. The
content we see on Google searches and the advertising we see online is becoming
increasingly tailored to our interests (or what our interests are perceived to
be).
However, I have to
disagree to some extent with Pariser’s message. While the potential for
completely tailored advertising is undoubtedly huge, I think the targeting is
still in somewhat of an experimental phase. If our online experiences are
happening in filter bubbles, then the degree of accuracy in which we are
defined could definitely improve. This is exemplified in my survey results, as
well as the studies I mentioned earlier. However, I will leave you with a final
test. Below are the ads on my Facebook home page right now:
BookFinder4u.com A
textbook website, okay, score one to Facebook, that’s pretty relevant.
Teach Yoga in India! Sounds
good, but I’ve never done yoga or
been to India before.
Machinery Trader.com Never
bought a digger before, that could be fun…
Wines That Rock Seriously,
that was the headline.
10% off Harley Davidsons today! Very cool, but I wouldn’t say I’m your target market.
Maybe this was the
most effective research after all. Sometimes, there will be some perfectly
targeted advertisements in social media, like a book site for a student. I have
no doubt that this occurred through joining university-related groups, changing
my education status and so forth. However, a lot of them are still missing the
mark. I have no idea how these other advertisements appeared on my Facebook
page. According to them, Facebook seems to think I’m a wine-drinking yoga
teacher who buys a lot of heavy machinery and enjoys cruising on a Harley
Davidson around India. Actually, that sounds awesome, maybe I will give these
ads a click after all…
Sources:
Eli Pariser’s The Filter Bubble
Favorite part: the image you close with! I think Eli Pariser also argues, like you, that from the advertisers' perspective, personalization has a far way to go but it's moving that way rapidly.
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