Research pick: Social advertising - "Is advertising on social media effective? An empirical study on the growth of advertisements on the Big Four (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp)"

Social media and online social networking are almost ubiquitous billions of people use the big four” services: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp; the latter three now all owned by Facebook. Many of these platforms have large financial turnover and employ thousands of staff. It’s big business. But, asks a new paper in the International Journal of Procurement Management is advertising on social media effective?

Mohammed Nuseir of the Department of Business Administration at Al Ain University of Science and Technology Abu Dhabi Campus, in the United Arab Emirates, points out how social media has over more than a decade created a new space in which business can sell their goods and services like never before. The big four applications link individuals through various formats – textual updates, graphics, and videos, for instance.

Nuseir has found that there is indeed a reciprocal relationship between users/consumers and the companies that are marketing to them via social media. This is underpinned by the nature of social media where users feel that they have more agency than they ever had with conventional media such as newspapers and magazines, radio, television, and even the internet before web 2.0. Users perceive themselves as having their own personal space within the realm of social media and that they have control of what they share and what passes before them on the various apps that give them access to these sites.

“This ownership and personalisation speak to the degree to which relationships are formed between corporate entities and individuals in contemporary society,” explains Nuseir. As such, marketers must recognise the personalisation of the advertisements they present to potential clients and they need to understand and build on the very reasons why people use social media in the first place. This is the route to successful marketing in the age of “social”.

Nuseir, M.T. (2020) ‘Is advertising on social media effective? An empirical study on the growth of advertisements on the Big Four (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp)’, Int. J. Procurement Management, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp.134–142