Social Media, Advertising Messages and the Youth: Any Influence?
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Date
2015-03-02
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New Media and Mass Communication
Abstract
Social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, twitter, and many others are popular internet sites where people
especially youth interact freely, sharing and discussing information about each other and their lives, products or
services, using multimedia mix of personal words, pictures, videos and audio. Advertisers have always been
fascinated by media and the youth because of their primacy to business. Social media are the latest platform that
advertisers are spending huge part of their advertising budget on, yet there is little or no research on the influence
these media have on the youth. The population of study is students of university of Lagos and Caleb University.
The survey design was adopted with the use of questionnaire as data collection instrument. A sample of 300
respondents was randomly selected and test instrument administered on them. The findings showed that 93.5%
of the respondents said they were exposed to advertisements on social media. 47% said social media
advertisements had positive influence on them, 45.2% said they ignore advertisements on social media, while
only 20% purchase products advertised on social media. The researchers concluded that social media may
contribute to brand awareness, create interest in the prospect and may in conjunctions with other factors move
prospect to take desired decision. However, social media should not be seen as the ultimate media to reach the
elusive youth market.