Advertising on Facebook

Abstract

Few studies have examined the effect of advertising within social networking sites. The purpose of this study is to identify whether word-of-mouth and viral advertising are present on Facebook, in particular through the News Feed and the Group and Event page applications. The first part of the paper looks at previous research done in relation to advertising online and social networking. A qualitative study is then carried out in order to check if this type of advertising takes place within the medium. The results confirm that both viral and word-of-mouth advertising are present, although word-of mouth seems to be more effective than viral advertising. A difference in behavioural patterns was also identified between frequent and less frequent Facebook users, indicating that more frequent Facebook users tend to participate and be affected more by this type of advertising. Finally, additional research is suggested to explore the effectiveness of word-of-mouth and viral advertising on Facebook and understand how users interact and respond to messages within this community.