Advertising on Social Media

By: Victoria

How many of you get annoyed when you encounter an advertisement on any of your social media accounts? Me too. Dear advertisers: I would like to have you note that am less likely to engage with your brand if you don’t let me skip your advertisement on YouTube after 5 seconds…

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(I almost had a breakdown back in 2013 when Yahoo! announced that they were going to buy over Tumblr (my beloved microblogging website) because I knew what was going to inevitably happen – ads. True enough, lo and behold, I was right.)

All kidding aside, one can only notice that social media advertising has become increasingly rampant in recent years.

I came across this survey done which found that 62% of Americans ignore advertisements on social media (Loechner, par. 2), which proves my above adage right.

So why then is social media marketing still such an attractive option to advertisers?

Social media advertising, first of all, allows great room for customization and personalization. An example is what is called “interest targeting” where advertisers can target you based on your ‘likes’ and engagement with pages on social media (Ganguly, par. 7).

Also, with the invention of smartphones, users are now connected 24/7, accessing their social media accounts multiple times a day (Ganguly, par. 14). Therefore, it is natural that advertisers would want to utilize social media to garner the most amount of impressions (a jargon that we use in advertising). Or, in simpler terms, “eyeballs”.

However, what I found the most interesting and what I’ve learnt the most is from this other article that came up in my research for this blog post. It talks about what an advertiser should know when marketing to the newest generation – Generation Z.

It notes that while Snapchat is now a great avenue for reaching out to Gen Z, it is not going to last forever (Johnson, par. 8). I suppose as all social media platforms is like any living organism. They come to be, grow, and die.

The article also finds that Gen Z are actually in favor of sponsored content (Johnson, par. 4).

Perhaps it would be accurate to say that social media advertising does indeed have its benefits - though invention of less invasive methods, like sponsored content, will definitely be welcomed by me!

Works Cited

Ganguly, Sonny. “Why Social Media Advertising is Set To Explode In The Next 3 Years”. Marketing Land, 17 Mar. 2015, http://marketingland.com/social-media-advertising-set-explode-next-3-years-121691. Accessed 28 Sep. 2016

Johnson, Lauren. “3 Things Brands Should Know About Gen Z – and They’re Not All About Snapchat”. Adweek, 28 Sep. 2016, http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/3-things-brands-should-know-about-gen-z-and-its-not-all-about-snapchat-173785. Accessed 28 Sep. 2016

Loechner, Jack. “Four of Five American Consumers Ignore Online Ads Most Frequently”. MediaPost, 25 Feb. 2014, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/220101/four-of-five-american-consumers-ignore-online-ads.html. Accessed 28 Sep. 2016.