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436 – Media Metrics

A Case Study of the Effectiveness of Facebook Advertising on College Students

at St. Petersburg College

Facebook continues to be the most popular social media site. For many people, visiting Facebook has become a part of daily routine. Companies view Facebook users as their potential customers, and are using a variety of ways to use Facebook to reach and attract as many audiences as possible. Some researchers state that Facebook is an effective marketing platform because networking and communication are already taking place. Others consider the effectiveness of Facebook advertising to be inconclusive and difficult to measure. The goal of this study was to explore the effects of Facebook advertising on the undergraduate college students, age 26 and younger. A total of 182 responses were collected through the survey. In terms of Facebook usage, 71% of students surveyed check their Facebook daily, 72.5% indicated that staying in touch with family and friends, which is their primary usage, while 21.3% indicated that following news and page updates were their primary usage. It is also found that students use Facebook significantly more often on their phone than they do on a computer. When asked about the amount of attention students give to Facebook advertisement, 80% of students gave a rating of 3 or less on a scale of 1 (least) to 10 (most), 97.3% of students never or rarely clicked on Facebook advertisements, 93.7% never or rarely shared a promotion with a Facebook friend. However, 10% of the students have printed coupons received by a Facebook page. In addition, students indicated that before making a purchase they mostly relied on search engine, visiting the store, or words of mouth. Social media is the last tool they used. The results of this study suggest that Facebook advertisement is not effective for traditional undergraduate college students.