advertising content and consumer engagement on social media: … · 2020. 1. 6. · • score an...

Kartik Hosanagar

Advertising Content and Consumer Engagement on Social Media:

Evidence from Facebook

- Lee, Hosanagar, Nair

2

Outline1. Introduction & Motivation

2. Data

3. Empirical Strategy

4. Findings

Introduction & Motivation

3

Social Media Scale

• Social Networks reach over 3 BILLION users

• Most major consumer-focused firms have social media presence

Introduction & Motivation

4

No Points for Showing UpOpportunity:

• Establish a relationship with consumers

• Instantaneously spread word about promotions & sales

• Virally spread information on customer engagement through Likes, Comments & Shares

Introduction & Motivation

Challenge:

• Only 1% of FB fans engage with brands

• Only about 0.2% of total possible status updates reach users (FB’s Filtering algorithm)

• Engineering content for right reach and engagement is essential

5

Research Question

What content attributes of social media messages elicit greater consumer response & engagement?

E.g. how does brand, product and price information influence response? Emotion, humor? Differences across industries?

Introduction & Motivation

6

Outline1. Introduction & Motivation

2. Data

3. Empirical Strategy

4. Findings

Introduction & Motivation

7

Data• Post-level panel data on messages posted by several companies from

Sep 2011 to July 2012• Message content• Likes, comments, and Shares on a daily basis

• After Cleaning: 106,316 unique messages posted by 782 companies from Sep 2011 to July 2012.

• Daily Likes & Comments: 1.3 million rows of post-level snapshots recording about 450 million page fans’ responses.

Data

Sample Messages from Walmart(Dec 2012 -https://www.facebook.com/walmart)

• Rollback with Vizio. Select models have lower prices ranging from $228 for a 32" (diagonal screen size 31.5") LCD TV to $868 on a 55” (diagonal screen size 54.6") LED TV. http://walmarturl.com/10oZ6yS (Product Advertisement + Price info + Brand Mention + Link)

• Maria’s mission is helping veterans and their families find employment. Like this and watch Maria’s story. http://walmarturl.com/VzWFlh (Philanthropic Message + Explicit Like solicitation + Link)

• On a scale from 1-10 how great was your Christmas? (Smalltalk + Question + Holiday)• Score an iPad 3 for an iPad2 price! Now at your local store, $50 off the iPad 3. Plus, get

a $30 iTunes Gift Card. Offer good through 12/31 or while supplies last. (Product Advertisement + Deal + Product Location + Product Stock Availability)

• Many posts above have attached photo

8Data

Content Labels• Based on econ, psychology & marketing lit

– Informative (shifting beliefs about product existence or prices) or brand personality (human characteristics associated with a brand )

– Informative• Resnick and Stern (1977) based on informational cues• Product-oriented facts, brand and product mentions

– Brand personality content • Humor, emotion, remarkable facts (Berger 2012)

Data

Finer Classification

Controls and content-related patterns also included

Data

Tagging of Content

• 9 different workers per message + Majority vote• Used to train tagging algorithm to tag remaining posts

– Greater than 99% accuracy for most variables of interest

11Data

• Worker Eligibility Criteria– Must have > 97% accuracy – Must have > 100 previously

approved tasks– Location: US only – Embedded question for

detecting if the worker is paying attention

NLP Algorithm Diagram

Data

NLP Algorithm Performance

Data

Descriptive Graphics

Celebrity

ConsumerProduct

Entertainment

Organization

PlacesBusiness

Websites

rem

fact

emot

ion

emot

icon

holid

ay

hum

or

phila

n

frien

dlike

ly

smal

ltalk

bran

dmen

tion

deal

pric

ecom

pare

pric

e

targ

et

prod

avai

l

prod

loc

prod

men

tion

Industry Category VS Message Content Appearance PercentageBiggest: Celebrity Smalltalk at 60.4% & Smallest: Celebrity PriceCompare at 0%

Data

15

Descriptive Graphics

Brand Content Informative Content

0

50

100

150

remfac

t

emoti

on

emoti

con

holida

yhu

morph

ilan

friend

likely

smallt

alk

brand

mentio

n

deal

price

compa

re

price

targe

t

proda

vail

prodlo

c

prodm

entio

n

Aver

age

Cou

nt

commentlike

Average number of likes and comments obtained over lifetime by message content

16

Outline1. Introduction & Motivation

2. Data

3. Empirical Strategy

4. Findings

17

VariablesEngagement Metric (Dependent Variable)

Variables that affect engagement (Independent Variables)

Informative Ad Content

• Brand and Product mention

• Price• Deals• Product

Availability• etc

Persuasive AdContent

• Emotion• Humor• Philanthropic• Emoticon• Small Talk• etc

Message Type

• Photo, Video, Status update, App, Link

Controls

• Impressions• Industry Type• Day since

post • Reading

Complexity • Message

Length• etc

Empirical Strategy

COMMENTS LIKES SHARES

Empirical Challenges

§ Firms do not post content at random

§ Facebook does not show posts to users at random

18

Outline1. Introduction & Motivation

2. Data

3. Empirical Strategy

4. Findings

Persuasive vs InformativePersuasive: Add up 8 persuasive (brand) content variables (ranges from 0 to 8)Informative: Add up 8 Informative content variables (ranges from 0 to 8)

19

−0.15

−0.10

−0.05

0.00

0.05

Persuasive Informative Persu X Inform

Logi

stic

Reg

ress

ion

Coe

ffici

ents

commentlike

Persuasive vs Informative Results (p−values < 0.001)

Only the statistically significant are graphed ( p-value mostly < 0.001)

20

COMMENTS

−0.15

−0.10

−0.05

0.00

0.05

remfac

t

emoti

on

emoti

con

holida

yhu

morph

ilan

friend

likely

smallt

alk

brand

mentio

nde

al

price

compa

re

price

targe

t

proda

vail

prodlo

c

prodm

entio

n

Logi

stic

Reg

ress

ion

Coe

ffici

ents

edgerankno edgerank

Logistic Regression Coefficients of Message Contents for Comments

Brand Content Informative Content

−0.2

−0.1

0.0

0.1

remfac

t

emoti

on

emoti

con

holida

yhu

morph

ilan

friend

likely

smallt

alk

brand

mentio

nde

al

price

compa

re

price

targe

t

proda

vail

prodlo

c

prodm

entio

n

Logi

stic

Reg

ress

ion

Coe

ffici

ents

edgerankno edgerank

Logistic Regression Coefficients of Message Contents for Likes

LIKES

21

Only the statistically significant are graphed ( p-value mostly < 0.001)

Brand Content Informative Content

22

Shares

−0.6

−0.4

−0.2

0.0

0.2

remfac

t

emoti

on

emoti

con

holida

yhu

morph

ilan

friend

likely

smallt

alk

brand

mentio

n

deal

price

compa

re

price

targe

t

proda

vail

prodlo

c

prodm

entio

n

Cro

ss−S

ectio

nal L

ogis

tic R

egre

ssio

n C

oeffi

cien

ts

Share

Logistic Regression Coefficients of Message Contents for Shares (Cross−Sectional

Brand Content Informative Content

23

Clicks

−0.4

−0.2

0.0

0.2

remfac

t

emoti

on

emoti

con

holida

yhu

morph

ilan

friend

likely

smallt

alk

brand

mentio

n

deal

price

compa

re

price

targe

t

proda

vail

prodlo

c

prodm

entio

n

Cro

ss−S

ectio

nal L

ogis

tic R

egre

ssio

n C

oeffi

cien

ts

Click

Logistic Regression Coefficients of Message Contents for Click (Cross−Sectional)

Brand Content Informative Content

24

Conclusions1. Message design (content and type) can help drive

engagement• Emotional and Philanthropic messages elicit

HIGHER levels of Likes & Comments• Product and price information (informative

advertising) elicit LOWER levels of Likes & Comments

• Clicks follow a similar pattern (caveat)• Informative content, when used, should be

combined with persuasive content2. Effects are clearly moderated by industry

Discussion