Description
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors and a complex set of the dyadic ties between these actors. The social network perspective provides a clear way of analyzing the structure of whole social entities.[1] The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.
A comparative study of the effectiveness of Advertising on different social networking ? The cases of Facebook, Orkut,Twitter & LinkedIn
TABLE OF CONTENTS ? Declaration ……………………………………………………………………… ...2 ? Acknowledgements………………………… ..…………………………………… 3 ? Executive Summary……………………………………… ...…………………… ..4 ? Chapter 1: Project Details…………………………………… ..……………… .....6
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1.1 Introduction 1.2 Purpose & Scope of study 1.3 Methodology ? Chapter 2: Data and Data Analysis………………… ..………………………… 51 2.1 Data Collection 2.2 Data Analysis ? Chapter 3: Findings/Conclusions and Recommendations…………………… ...69 3.1 Conclusion 3.2 Constraints & Limitations 3.3 Recommendations ? Chapter 4: Annexure & Bibliography………………………………………… 73 ? Bibliography………………………………………………………………… ......73 ? Annexure…………………………………………………………………… .......74
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Executive Summary
Internet is the emerging information technology with the credibility of immediacy and fastness, thus, it brings globalization in every aspects of communication. Communication through internet is more specified, with effective interactive strategy among its users. In recent days, internet advertising has taken new forms which have more advantages over the traditional mediums like print media, television and radio. Marketing communication is becoming precise, personal, interesting, interactive and social. Different strategies of communication are followed in various social networking sites like Face book, Twitter and Orkut. They not only create impact over the audience but also make them interact with the marketing statistics created. People get attached to brand communication in social networking sites than usual banner and pop up ads. These networking sites bring more interactive communication with advertising. Social networking sites will become the primary arena for highly targeted marketing and advertising. Therefore, it is necessary to study the effectiveness of brand communication strategy followed in social networking sites which are mainly accessed by Indian users. This research attempts to find the effectiveness of brand communication strategy in promoting and advertising their brand in social networking sites. The effectiveness is determined with the help of survey from people who use these sites, and the content of three social networking sites is analyzed.
The proposed study includes the perspective of the consumers . It attempts to answer the following questions: 1. Is social network advertising effective in sales for companies or is it simply ending up in attracting junk traffic? 2. Which is the most preferred Social Network advertising approach? 3. Does a customer like being approached on social networking sites?
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1.INTRODUCTION
1.1 Project Details
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SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES (Social Networking Sites) We define social networking sites as web based services that allow individuals to construct a public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site. Other way of defining Social networking sites is that it is a place where people can use networks of online friends and group memberships to keep in touch with current friends, reconnect with old friends or create real-life friendships through similar interests or groups. Besides establishing important social relationships, social networking members can share their interests with other like-minded members by joining groups and forums. Some networking can also help members find a job or establish business contacts. Social networking sites include Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, orkut and so on. Most social networking websites also offer additional features. In addition to blogs and forums, members can express themselves by designing their profile page to reflect their personality. The most popular extra features include music and video sections. Members can read bios of their favorite music artists from the artist's profile page as well as listen to their favorite songs and watch music videos. The video section can include everything from member-generated videos from hundreds of subjects to TV clips and movie trailers. What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. On many of the large sites, participants are not necessarily "networking" or looking to meet new people instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network. While SNS have implemented a wide variety of technical features, their backbone consists of visible profiles that display an articulated list of friends who are also users of the system. Profiles are unique pages where one can "type oneself into being". After joining an SNS, an individual is asked to fill out forms containing a series of questions. The profile is generated using the answers to these questions, which typically include descriptions such as age, location, interests, and an "about me" Section. Most sites also encourage users to upload a profile photo. Some sites allow users to enhance their profiles by adding multimedia content or modifying their profile?s look and feel. Others, such as Facebook, allow users to add modules ("Applications") that enhance their profile.
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After joining a social network site, users are prompted to identify others in the system with whom they have a relationship. The label for these relationships differs depending on the site popular terms include "Friends," "Contacts" and "Fans". Most Social Networking Sites require bidirectional confirmation for Friendship, but some do not. These one - directional ties are sometimes labeled as "Fans" or "Followers". The public display of connections is a crucial component of Social Networking Sites. The friends list contains links to each friend?s profile, enabling viewers to traverse the network graph by clicking through the Friends lists. On most sites, the list of Friends is visible to anyone who is permitted to view the profile, although there are exceptions. Many Social Networking Sites also provide a mechanism for in users to leave messages on their Friends? profiles. This feature typically involves leaving "comments," Although sites employ various labels for this feature. In addition, Social Networking Sites often have a private messaging feature similar to webmail. While both private messages and comments are popular most of the major Social Networking Sites, they are not universally available. Beyond profiles, Friends, comments, and private messaging, Social Networking Sites vary greatly in their features and user base. Some have photo - sharing or video sharing capabilities others have built - blogging and instant messaging technology. While Social Networking Sites are often designed to be widely accessible, many attract homogeneous populations initially, so it is not uncommon to find groups using sites to segregate themselves by nationality, age, educational level, or other factors that typically segment society even if that was not the intention of the designers.
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Some Top Social Networking Sites : Facebook.com
Homepage of Facebook.com
Facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users, more than half of whom use Facebook on a mobile device. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum,Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. Facebook now allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site. In May 2005, Accel partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer added $1 million of his own money to the pot.
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According to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site's terms of service. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-thedecade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?" Critics, such as Facebook Detox, state that Facebook has turned into a national obsession in the United States, resulting in vast amounts of time lost and encouraging narcissism. Quantcast estimates Facebook has 138.9 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May 2011. According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% (129.5 million) of the U.S. population had a Facebook account. Nevertheless, Facebook's market growth started to stall in some regions, with the site losing 7 million active users in the United States and Canada in May 2011.
Offices of Facebook Inc.
Menlo Park Headquarters Facebook Ireland Ltd. Facebook Hyderabad
Revenue of Facebook.com
Year Revenue Growth
2006 $52 ---------------2007 $150 188% 2008 $280 87% 2009 $775 177% 2010 $2,000 158% 2011 $4,270 114%
Facebook generally has a lower clickthrough rate (CTR) for advertisements than most major Web sites. According to BusinessWeek.com, banner advertisements on Facebook have generally received one-fifth the number of clicks compared to those on the Web as a whole, although specific comparisons can reveal a much larger disparity. For example, while Google users click on the first advertisement for search results an average of 8% of the time (80,000 clicks for every one million searches), Facebook's users click on advertisements an average of 0.04% of the time (400 clicks for every one million pages).
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Orkut
Home Page of Orkut.com Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google. The service is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competitors Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil. As of October 2011, 59.1% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 27.1% and Japan with 6.7%. Originally hosted in California, in August 2008 Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte. This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues. As of October 2012, Alexa traffic ranked Orkut.com 746th and Orkut.com.br 738th in the world; the web site currently has over 33 million active users worldwide. Orkut was quietly launched on January 22, 2004 by Google, the search engine company. Orkut Büyükökten, a Turkish software engineer, developed it as an independent project while working at Google. This project was made mainly due to the objective of finding a girl friend and not at all with the objective of making a social networking website for all others to enjoy and that is
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why it was updated afterwards. While previously working for Affinity Engines, he had developed a similar system, In Circle, intended for use by university alumni groups. In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Büyükkökten and Google based Orkut on in Circle code. The allegation is based on the presence of 9 identical bugs in Orkut that also exist in In Circle.
LinkedIn
Home Page of LinkedIn.com LinkedIn Corporation is a social networking website for people in professional occupations. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of January 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 200 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech,Polish, Korean, Indonesian, and Malay. Quantcast
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reports LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally. In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace. LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD". LinkedIn's CEO is Jeff Weiner, previously a Yahoo! Inc. executive. The company was founded by Reid Hoffman and founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri). Founder Reid Hoffman, previously CEO of LinkedIn, is now Chairman of the Board. Deep Nishar is Vice President of Products.LinkedIn is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in Omaha, Chicago, New York, London and Dublin. It is funded by Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and the European Founders Fund. LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006. Through January 2011, the company had received a total of $103 million of investment. In late 2003, Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the company.In June 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-money valuation of approximately $1 billion. In 2010, LinkedIn opened a European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland,[received a $20 million investment from Tiger Global Management LLC at a valuation of approximately $2 billion, and announced its first acquisition, Mspoke, and improved its 1% premium subscription ratio. In October of that year Silicon Valley Insider ranked the company No. 10 on its Top 100 List of most valuable start ups. By December, the company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets.
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Revenue Model of LinkedIn.com
The main revenue model of LinkedIn.com is Google adsense. Through which its shows different types of advertisement and generate revenue.
Some Facts About LinkedIn
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Twitter.com
Home Page of Twitter.com
Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140characters, known as "tweets". Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and by July, the social networking site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million registered users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as "the SMS of theInternet." Unregistered users can read tweets, while registered users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of apps for mobile devices. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, with additional servers and offices in New York City, Boston, and San Antonio
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Facts about Twitter
Area served Founder(s) Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams, Biz Stone Key people Jack Dorsey (Chairman) Dick Costolo (CEO) IndustryI nternet Revenue US$140 million (2010 est.) Worldwide Employees Website 900+ (2012) twitter.com
Written in JavaScript,Ruby,Scala,Java Alexa rank 10 (February 2013) Type of site Social network
service,microblogging Registration Required to post, follow, or be followed Users 200 million (active February 2013) Available in Launched Multilingual July 15, 2006[9]
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What is Online Advertising
On line advertising is similar to other forms of communication except for one critical difference that is Internet. Consumer behavior follows a model radically different from traditional advertising media. This model can be explained as the progression 'Awareness - Interest - Desire Action'. All these activities occur simultaneously in Internet advertising. Online advertising entails, placing of electronic messages on a web site or email platform which achieves the following purpose? Generates awareness for the brand. ? Stimulates interest /preference for a product or service. ? Provides the means to contact the advertiser for information orto make a purchase.
History of Internet Advertising
Advertising has faithfully served the print industry for 200 years, and was applied to the Internet with every expectation of success. Web advertising began with Center and Siegel?s in famous Green Card Lottery message on the Usenet site in April 1994 and was followed in October by advertising placements for AT&T, MCI, Sprint, and Volvo on Hot-wired and finally the idea caught on. The Advertisement grew in sophistication, and today there are Static, rotating, scrolling, animated, flash and interstitial banner ads a which are designed to generate traffic, increase brand awareness and generate leads and sales. Internet companies were founded on advertising revenues, and for some years the companies prospered. Rate depended on: i. The Type of advertisement. ii. Where it appeared on the WebPages. iii. How it integrated with content. iv. How well it matched the advertiser?s target audience
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Online advertising has to offer: 1. Scalability Like television commercials, it doesn't cost very much to increase the reach of an online ad campaign. There is no need to print additional copies of a magazine, or to create and mail directmail pieces. 2. Hot demographics The online community is more affluent, better educated, and younger and more willing to spend than the population at large. More and more people go online and the number is ever increasing. 3. Targeted messages Unlike broadcast and print media, the Internet allows advertisers to target exactly who will see their ads, and in what context. Web publications serve every conceivable audience, from the mass-market obscure niche groups. Beyond that, the technology leads target customers by their computing platform (PCs or Macintoshes), Web browser(specific versions of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer),domain type (. com, .edu, .gov, .mil, or .net) or individual domains (America Online, IBM, Prodigy). 4. Broad and flexible reach While the Net cannot yet match television's market penetration, the size of the online audience is growing very quickly. More importantly, because you buy online ads by the impression, you can buy as much or as little of that audience as you desire. And that's true no matter how popular or specialized the site on which your ads run- as a rule, advertising costs depend on how many impressions you buy, not on the size of a site's audience. 5. Cost-effective Partly because you pay only for exactly what you're getting, online advertising can be extremely competitive with other forms of advertising. If you buy 1,000 ad impressions, for example, you know that exactly 1,000 people will see your ad.
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6. Detailed tracking and measurement Compared to online advertising, traditional media advertising is like shooting in the dark. The Web allows advertisers to gather detailed information on who saw an ad, when, in what context, how many times and so on. Better still; you get this information instantly, not weeks later when it's too late to adjust your campaign. Of course, not every site currently provides this level of feedback, and not every advertiser knows what to do with it. Over a period of time, however, this is likely to become one of Web advertising's most important competitive advantages. 7. The ability to extend the transaction Traditionally, advertising was a one-way mechanism. Apart from techniques like toll-free numbers pitched in infomercials and mail-in coupons in print publications, there was no way for customers to act on the information in the ads. On the Web, though, interested customers can click, learn more, and actually buy on the spot. There's simply nothing more powerful.8. 8. Good Creativity Creative Design of Home page is very important for the surfer to get hooked on to the site. Within seconds the user should get an idea about the site and where to go within it. If the opportunity is missed the user many never return. 9. Hence Content is King Content is the most important element of a site. Content rich Web pages lure users. The value on the web is information. The beauty and challenge of the Web is that it gives the user, the ability to personalize non-static information and choose exactly what she sees. Unlike commercials or print ads, a Web ad banner is only the beginning of the process. While your banner may present only your branding message, interested prospects can always click on it to go directly to your Web site. Once there, they can access as much material on your company and products as you care to present. Graphics & the visual elements also play an important role in the users decision to stay or leave. Use of creative concepts, colors, movement &sound enhance the chances of the user staying longer on the site. In addition to all this the creators of web sites & on line advertising must take into consideration the factors like :-
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a) How fast does the site download, b) How easily navigable the site is, c) What is the domain name, d) What are the other publicity & advertising activities which building traffic to the site? If all such parameters are considered while selecting the web sites for online advertising, the impact of such advertising will definitely be felt. Online advertising is one medium, which helps to generate awareness about the brand being advertised, it can help in creating an image, it helps in educating the audience and also builds interactivity & direct response. No other traditional medium has the ability to give all of this. We are still at the experimental stage but many clients have already started allocating a budget towards online advertising & web is being considered not only as an advertising medium but also as a marketing tool. Hence online advertising, though slow to take off, will definitely be a medium of the future.
Internet Users Population Chart
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Advantages of Online Advertisement 1. Target Marketing A major advantage of the web is the ability to target very specific groups of individuals with a minimum of waste coverage. In the consumer market. Through personalization and other targeting techniques, sites are becoming more tailored to meet once need and want.
2. Message Tailoring As a result of precise targeting, messages can be designed to appeal to the specific needs and wants of the target audience. The interactive capability of the net makes it possible to carry on one-to-one marketing with increased success in both the business and the consumer markets.
3. Interactive Capabilities The interactive nature of the web leads to a degree of customer involvement. Site visitors are already interested enough in the company and/ or products to visit.
4. Information access Perhaps the greatest advantage of the Internet is its availability as an information source. Internet users can find a plethora of information about almost any topic of merely by conducting search through one of the search engines. Once they have visited a particular site, uses can garner a wealth of information regarding product specification, costs, purchase information, and so on. Links will direct them to even more information if it is desired.
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5. Creativity Creatively design sites can enhance company's image leading to repeat visits, and positively position the company or organization in the consumer's mind. 6.Exposure For many seller companies with limited budget the www (world wide web) enables them to gain exposure to potential customers that heretofore would have been impossible. For a function of the investment that would be required using traditional media, companies can gain national and even international exposure in a timely manner. 7. Speed For those requiring information on a company, its products, and /or its service offerings, the Internet is the quickest means of acquiring this information.
Disadvantages of Internet 1. Measurement problem One the greatest disadvantage of the net is the lack of reliability of the research numbers generate. A Quick review of forecasts, audience profiles, and other statistics offered by research providers will demonstrate a great deal of variance leading to a serious lack of validity and reliability. One of the industry's largest and most sited trade publication has written an expose of a heavily sited Internet research company, referring to the number it provides as "scary" feathers have stressed concern over the fact that most sites figures or not audited, which mainly to rampant cheating in the respect of the number reported.2. 2. Audience characteristic Due imparts to the accelerating growth of the net, audience characteristic change quickly. Numbers reported may be completed quickly and are often vary from one provided to the next.
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3. Web Snarl At times, downloading information from the net takes a long time. When there are a number of users, the time increasing and some Sites may be inaccessible due to too many visitors. For many users who expect speed, this is a major disadvantage. 4. Costs The cost of doing business on the MAT continues to increase. While it is possible to establish a site in expensively, establishing a good side and maintaining it is becoming more and more costly. As noted earlier , Levi?s for the cost of maintaining a site is considered "world-Class " was prohibitive and one of the reason for abandoning its E-commerce efforts. 5. Limited production quality Although it is improving, net advertising does not offer the capability of many competitive media for a production standpoint. While the advent of advanced technologies and rich medium is narrowing the gap, the net still lags behind some areas. 6. Poor reach While the Internet numbers are growing in leaps and bounds, its six is still far behind that of television. As a result, interest companies have turned to traditional medium to achieve reach and awareness goals. In addition statistics says that only a small percentage of sites on the Internet are captured and that the top 50 sites listed account for 95 percent of the site visited. 7. Language If I am selling the goods through the media the buyer prefer to get the information of the products or services with his own language but the advertiser has no option than to advertise in one single language which is a major disadvantage. Given below is the comparison between Traditional and Web Advertising that will signify the importance of in today's world.
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Traditional Advertisement
Bound by geography and location Advertisement costs are relativelyhigh Lead times for implementation are substantial
Online Adverisements
The Web market is borderless Web Advertisement rates are relatively low
Lead times are virtually non-existent Web marketing is based on high Limited interactivity exists. level of interactivity Customer feedback is immediate Getting customer feedback is a painful process Tracking the effectiveness of the Advertisement efforts is Effectiveness can be easily relatively difficult monitored On the internet Marketing efforts are restricted bytime and space Advertisement can becarried out 24 hours a day, 365 days a year Web advertising is dynamic and Traditional marketing is static multimedia supported Web advertising requires the user Traditional advertising does not invoke immediate action To take immediate action - like Clicking on the banner ad and thus going to your site to know more of company The user has a high attention level Advertisements are passively received while he is on the net. Thus advertisements get noticed, remembered, and acted upon Here, while searching for travel Advertisements are ubiquitous sites, ads related to travel agencies are displayed Advertisements are very focused. Advertising does not target a focuse daudience PC software can be displayed to PC users, while MAC users are Not shown those ads
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WHY SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES ARE USED AS AN ADVERTISING TOOL? From the last decade, social networking is on the rise for business reasons and also for personal use. With its popularity increasing day by day, the need for business tables to go social is indispensable. There are four main reasons for social networks used as advertising tools. 1. Cost efficiency- Advertising on social networks is relatively cheap compared to other Traditional media, it usually has a similar or expanded reach at much lower costs. In Addition, it is possible for companies to generate free publicity through creative Advertising techniques. There have been a number of successful viral marketing Campaigns in YouTube and Facebook in the recent years. Creating a page for a brand in facebook is free which is cost efficiency and also creates a large number of active followers. 2. Large reach- Since social networking websites has millions of active users, it has become more popular and acts as a good medium for sharing their SOCIAL EXPERIENCE and helps in building relationships. The impact for a social network is the reach of an advertisement on a large scale. With its demand for advertisement is on the rise, displaying an advertisement is significant in such networks is essential for its improvement in potential. The reach by a social network is greater than any other mass media of its kind. 3. Targeted advertising- Advertisers have access to a great deal of information about Users and their interests, allowing them to customize and target their advertisements to a degree not yet seen in any other advertising medium. For example, if a user lists "pro Wrestling" as an interest on their Facebook profile, the websites advertising system Will generate advertisements based on that particular interest. However, this can raise Privacy issues: Facebook?s Beacon targeted advertising system suffered a great deal of backlash and had to be modified heavily to appease its users. 4. Time spent online- People are spending increasing amounts of time online, especially on social networking websites, at the expense of traditional advertising media such as television and newspapers. This can be viewed as a result of many of the traditional functions - news, television shows - of the old advertising Media being shifted online to social networks such as Digg and YouTube. As a result, Advertisers are increasingly looking for ways to reach out to consumers who are Spending more and more time online.
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Types of Online Advertising Google AdWords (Pay-per-click Advertising)
Pay per click advertising is an excellent alternative for companies who have the financial resources and can make an investment in order to bring targeted traffic to their websites. Like SEO traffic, AdWords is considered targeted because people are actually typing in keyword phrases that are relevant to your products and services before clicking on your advertisement. This can bring a flood of traffic to your online business very quickly, and this is an excellent choice as long as you?re able to turn a profit. That?s where the problem usually lies for small companies who are inexperienced with this form of advertising. There is a lot of competition in pay per click campaigns these days, and it is very easy to waste a great deal of money if you don?t have the experience. Many e-commerce stores get wrapped up in bidding wars that cost product margins to drop substantially. Therefore, if you?re going to give this form of advertising a try, just make sure that you take an excellent training course and be ready to invest some money in the beginning while you figure out the entire process.
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Banner Advertising
This form of online advertising is even older than the search engines themselves, and the concept is pretty simple. You simply put some sort of banner (usually with a catchy image and headline) on a relevant website. Users who choose to click the banners will end up on your website and hopefully will make a purchase. The problem is that these days, web users have developed "banner blindness" so only a small percentage will actually click on your ad. With this in mind, you need to make sure that you?re not paying very much for your advertising, especially if you are paying a certain amount per impressions (impressions means that your ad would show up a certain number of times and you will get charged regardless of whether anyone actually clicks on your advertisement).
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Newsletter Advertising
You can contact webmasters and email programs to ask them if they are willing to sell ad space in their newsletter or e-zine. This way you will have access to their subscribers and be able to reach them with a simple low cost advertisement. The ad can be something as simple as a text link that states your website is a sponsor of that publication. Generous newsletter publishers may allow you to have an entire page space on their sent publications to give you maximize exposure. This makes it much simpler to reach an audience that wants to read the email with your website content information included.
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Affiliate Marketing
Whether you specialize in physical products or in digital information products like e-books and other courses, affiliate marketing is a great form of online advertising. The major advantage is that you don?t actually have to pay your affiliates a commission until the sale is made. If you do a good job of promoting your affiliate program in the appropriate marketplaces, then these affiliates can do most of the legwork for you like writing articles, using pay per click advertising themselves, and ultimately driving traffic to your product in any number of ways. Unfortunately, there are still many website owners outside of traditional Internet marketing who are not familiar with the concept of affiliate commissions and may think there is something shady going on. So you simply have to be a salesperson and convince people that your affiliate program is legitimate and profitable. You also have to make sure to choose an excellent network such as Clickbank or Paydotcom.
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Social Media
Have you heard of Facebook? Of course you have. What you may not realize is that social media can be used as a form of online advertising, and Facebook ads are excellent examples. At the same time, however, you have to realize that most people are simply using these social networks to hang out with their friends and engaging in entertainment and conversations. Major companies are already expressing doubts about the efficacy of social media marketing campaigns. There are now entire books being written about social media ROI (return on investment), so this tells you that you need to be careful not to waste a lot of time in busy work without evaluating the results. However Facebook does have its advantages as it uses an advertising system that is very simple to implement and offers a wide scope of coverage in the Facebook website. Only Facebook users that are within the specific demographic you choose will be able to see the advertising. This helps to narrow down who sees advertising so you are not wasting your money on people who are not going to be interested in what your website has to offer.
Some Other Ad Format Inline text links
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Inline text links are ads that appear as a brief text description in boxes with clear call-to-actions, prompting users to learn more information from partners' websites. These ads only appear when the mouse pointer is moved over certain words and is perfectly relevant to the content. Inline text links are great when you want to save valuable space on your Web pages, they are also similar to newspaper headlines that raise interest for a distinctive topic. With the possibility of frequent format changes, very few restrictions and no spending for the development of graphical ad formats, inline text links are a pure, yet effective option to advertise cross the Internet.
Text ads
Advertisements displayed as simple, text-based hyperlinks are known as Text Ads. As their name suggests, text ads they do not include graphic images. Text ads are sold on non-search websites and can be served either by individual websites, or a publisher?s own ad servers.
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Display Ads
Graphical advertisements featured on websites are known as Display Ads. Display ads are often available in many standard shapes and sizes, including: banners, leader boards, skyscrapers, large boxes, and other sized graphical ads. Display ads use eye-catching visuals to quickly grab catch the attention of website visitors browsing the pages on which they are featured. Display ads are sold on non-search websites and can be served either by individual websites, or a publisher?s own ad servers.
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Pop-Up Ads
Advertisements that appear to "pop up" in a new window as users browse a website are known as Pop-Up Ads. Hover ads, floating ads and slide-in ads ads are all considered pop-up ads. (Sometimes these ads are also known as Pop-Under Ads, depending on whether they are displayed over or underneath the current web content being browsed.) The use of Flash and DHTML ads has risen in recent years in an effort to counter the increased usage of pop-up blockers.
Flash / DHTML Ads
These kinds of ads incorporate Flash animation or other motion graphics. Ads may be animated display ads in more traditional shapes and sizes, or, as of late, they can be sophisticated ads that function similarly to pop-up ads but with much deeper integration into the overall design of the site.
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Interstitial Ads
Interstitial ads appear between web pages that the user requests. For example, an interstitial ad may appear after you click on a link in an excerpt to view the full content of news story. Because interstitial ads load in the background and do not interrupt the users immediate browsing experience, they are a preferred method of delivering ads with rich media, streaming video, and/or large graphics.
Video Ads
With the popularity of online video watching, video ads have become a viable means of distributing rich advertising content. Currently video ads can either be content created entirely by the advertiser, or "in video" ads that will show your ad within a video. Major search properties like Google (through YouTube), MSN, Yahoo, and AOL all offer advertising on their video websites.
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On-Site Sponsorships On-Site sponsorships are ads (typically just a company?s logo) that can be bought on individual websites. Sponsorship ads typically appear in an area on the website reserved for sponsors and often noted as such. Advertorials Advertisements in editorial form that appear to contain objectively-written opinions are known as paid editorial ads, or "Advertorials". Online advertorials are typically featured on publisher?s websites and promote products and services related to the website?s content. Some ad networks will develop, optimize, and write your advertorial and place it on their ad network.
Targeting Methods
Contextual Targeting When ads are served based on related content a user is currently reading or browsing online, it is known as contextual targeting. For example, if you are reading an article on a news website about sports, you may see contextual ads for sports gear, memorabilia, or game tickets. Contextual ads are purchased through major search properties like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and through many other contextual ad networks. Ad relevancy is typically determined by algorithms that will assess the appropriateness of the ad in relation to the displayed content. Behavioral Targeting When ads are served based on user behavior, it is known as behavioral targeting. Behavioral targeting is based on a variety of online factors such as recent online purchases, searches, and browsing history, as well as demographic details such age or gender. For example, if you recently visited a real estate website, you may see behavioral ads selling mortgages. Geo-Targeting / Local Advertising When ads are served based on a user?s geographical location, it is known as geo-targeting. For advertisers interested in targeting users within a specific locality or region, geo-targeted online advertising is an effective solution. An increasing number of websites now offer geo-targeting capabilities. Local advertising also includes network buys through radio, television and newspaper websites, as well as localized search engines and directories such as Yahoo! Local, Google Local, and AOL City Guide.
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Advertisement Types on Social Networking Sites
Facebook Advertising
With over 500 million active users across the globe, Facebook is the largest social network online today. Because of its popularity and ability to target users based on their profile data, Facebook is a very attractive platform for advertisers. Facebook offers simple image and text-based ads that are highly targeted toward user data, with the ability to test multiple ad versions to maximize the effectiveness of your campaign. Withcontrollable ad costs, flexible pricing structures like CPC and CPM, and its own tracking analytics, Facebook ads can be a very effective way to reach your target market.
LinkedIn Advertising
LinkedIn is the professional social network that boasts over 90 million members. LinkedIn offers several different advertising options that range in visibility and affordability, including self-service ads called DirectAds and more robust advertising options leveraging multiple display ad formats, as well as others.
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On LinkedIn, advertisers have the unique ability to target users by job title ad function, seniority, company name, company size, and industry. Larger ad buyers can target based on custom criteria such as Career Changes, Unemployed Professionals, Business Travelers, and Opinion Leaders, among others. Such granular professional targeting options make LinkedIn a very effective B2B advertising option.
Twitter Advertising
Twitter offers its own advertising options in the form of Promoted Tweets. Promoted Tweets are ordinary tweets that advertisers pay to highlight to a wider group of users. Displayed at the top of Twitter.com search results pages and in some users? tweet streams and third-party Twitter applications (such as TweetDeck), Promoted Tweets are very visible and retain all the functionality of a regular tweet. Since Promoted Tweets are essentially regular tweets, they are not an "ad" in the traditional sense and function more as an organic part of Twitter. Twitter also offers Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts.
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Looking for Advertisement patterns
If the Advertiser make use of cookies to analyze the path of each visitor, then they can start to make assumptions about what people are looking for and if they had trouble finding it. The trick is to look for patterns. The researcher, the comparison shopper and the buyer all have their own traffic patterns, and it?s up to you to serve them according to their needs. If people are always clicking from the product page to the warranty page and back, it?s good stewardship to put the pertinent information on the product page and save them a click. Watch where they go and then do what you can to make their way easier next time. The final consideration is how often people visit your site a combination of regency and frequency. It?s great that somebody came to your site 10 times in one day, but if that day was six months ago, it won ?t do you any good. The most desirable regency-frequency tally is different for different types of sites. If your name is Yahoo! or AOL, then you want all the people, all the time. Identifying prospects Identifying what pattern is the best indication of imminent procurement which depends upon the Review of the site path taken by those who completed the purchase and watch for it again. Your site can make special offer when a potential customer visits a certain number of times or looks at particular pages. And then you can go one step further, called Geniality?s a clever software that will determine the fewest attributes common to those who performed the desired act (purchase, register, subscribe, etc.). It shifts through mountains of data about your customers so you can more quickly recognize the ones who are statistically most likely to buy, and it can tell you which offer is the one most likely to make that sale. Taking all this into the consideration one can manage their site measurement of effectiveness.
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Online Advertising Operational Definition
Advertising Network A group of websites, which share a common banner server Typically, a sales organization, which manages the commerce and reporting. An ad network has the ability to deliver unique combinations of targeted audiences because they serve your banner or ad across multiple sites. Ad view An ad view, synonymous with ad impression, is a single ad that appears (usually in full view without scrolling) on a Web page when the page arrives at the viewer?s display. Ad views are what most Web sites sell or prefer to sell. A Web page may offer space for a number of ad views. In general, the term impression is more commonly used. Affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing is the use by a Web site that sells products of other Web sites, called affiliates, to help market the products. Amazon.com, the bookseller, created the first large-scale affiliate program and hundreds of other companies have followed since. Bandwidth The amount of information that can be transmitted over communications lines at one time. The higher the bandwidth, the faster the Web page loads. Limited bandwidth is the main reason for keeping pictures small. Just as it seems we will never have fast enough computers, it feels like we will never have enough bandwidth. The amount of research and development money being thrown at this problem should yield surprising results before long. Click According to ad industry recommended guidelines from FAST, a click is 'when a visitor interacts with an advertisement.' This does not apparently mean simple interacting with a rich media ad, but actually clicking on it so that the visitor is headed toward the advertiser?s destination. (It also does not mean that the visitor actually waits to fully arrive at the destination, but just that the visitor started going there).
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Click streams The electronic path a user takes while navigating from site to site, and within site, from page to page. Click Through The act of clicking on a banner or other ad, which takes the use through to the advertiser's Web site. Used as a counter point to impressions to judge the response-inducing power of the banner. Click Through Rate (CTR) - The response rate of an online advertisement, typically expressed as a percentage and calculated by taking the number of click through the ad received, dividing that number by the number of impressions and multiplying by 100 to obtain a percentage - Example 20clicks / 1,000 impressions = .02 x 100 = 2% CTR CPA Cost Per Action. The price paid by an advertiser for each „action' that a content site delivers. 'Action' may be a sale, a lead, successful form fill-out, a download of a software program or an ecommerce sale of a product. Both the action, price and terms of a CPA purchase are mutually agreed upon by the advertiser and content site and such a purchase typically involves a back end tracking system provided by the advertiser that allows the content site to view clicks and actions every 24 hours if they choose to do so. CPC Cost Per Click. The price paid by an advertiser to a content site. When buying on a Cost Per Click model, the advertiser and content site have mutually agreed that the content site will continue to display the advertiser?s ad creative until X number of clicks have been delivered - the amount purchased. As with other forms of online advertising, s dependent on content, audience reached and targeted delivery - Untargeted being owner priced, targeted to an affluent audience being at the high end of the rate scale.
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CPM (Cost Per Mile) Cost Per Thousand (Roman Numeral) impressions. The price paid by an advertiser for a content site displaying their banner 1,000 times. CPS (Cost Per Sale) Cost Per Sale. The price paid by an advertiser to a content site for each sale that results from a visitor who is referred from the content site to the advertiser?s site. This type of buying model is typically tracked with cookies, where the cookie is offered on the content site and read on the advertiser?s site at the success page after successful completion of one transaction/sale. Typical rates/bounties range between 5% and 25% of the retail price of the product or service being sold. See also CPA above. Cookies Client-side text file that is used by Web servers to store information about the site visitor and visitor behavior. Information pertaining to a site can only be ready the side that wrote the information. Used to identify repeat visitors and track visitor behavior. Effective Frequency The number of times an ad should be shown to one person to realize the highest impact of the ad without wasting impressions on that individual. Frequency The number of times a given person will see an ad in agiven time period. Gross Exposures/Gross Impressions - The total number of times an ad is shown, including duplicate showings to the same person. Hits Every time a file is sent by a server, be it text, graphic, video, and so on, it is recorded as a hit. Not a reliable gauge to compare different sites, as one page with five graphic elements will register six hits when viewed, while a page with no graphics will only register one hit.
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Impression The Opportunity To See (OTS) a banner or other ad by a surfer. When a page that includes a banner is viewed, it is considered an impression. Inventory - The amount of available space for banners on a Website that can be delivered in a given time period. Also known as the amount of gross impressions per month (or clicks if the publishers is selling on a Cost Per Click rate model) available for sale to advertisers by a Web publisher. Link A hypertext connection between two documents, image maps, graphics, and the like. Page view When a Web page is requested by somebody through a browser. Page views are often used to track the number of impressions a banner gets. Run-of-network A run-of-network ad is one that is placed to run on all sites within a given network of sites. Ad sales firms such as Latitude90handle run-of-network insertion orders in such a way as to optimize results for the buyer consistent with higher priority ad commitments. Run-of-site A run-of-site ad is one that is placed to rotate on all non-featured ad spaces on a site. CPM rates for run-of-site ads are usually less than for rates for specially-placed ads or sponsorships. Spam Originally posting an ad to multiple newsgroups, now used to describe unsolicited email advertising. Named after a skit by Monty Python, spam is one marketing and advertising technique to avoid at all costs
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Unique visitor A unique visitor is someone with a unique address who is entering a Web site for the first time that day (or some other specified period). Thus, a visitor that returns within the same day is not counted twice. A unique visitors count tells you how many different people there are in your audience during the time period, but not how much they used the site during the period. View A view is, depending on what?s meant, either an ad view or a page view. Usually an ad view is what?s meant. There can be multiple ad views per page views. View counting should consider that a small percentage of users choose to turn the graphics off (not display the images) in their browser. Visit A visit is a Web user with a unique address entering a Web site at some page for the first time that day (or for the first time in a lesser time period). The number of visits is roughly equivalent to the number of different people that visit a site. This term is ambiguous unless the user defines it, since it could mean a user session or it could mean a unique visitor that day.
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1.2 PURPOSE & SCOPE OF STUDY
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Purpose & Scope of study
Social networking has been used by most of the people in and around the nations. It has reached even to basic sectors. Despite the enormous growth of social networks in these years, the advertisements sectors have never faced major success due to several reasons. Thus, a useful growth turning into an effectual way for those sectors. To make it effective, we have to put-forth a positive trait in this fast moving world by proposing some new methodologies and inducing some modifications to the existing system. I) To determine the impacts of advertisements on social networking sites. II) To determine the criteria for successful advertising in social networking medium
I) To Determine The Impacts Of Advertisements On Social Networking Sites. In the past few decades most people said that social networks were a waste of time and resources. But in the past five years, the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Orkut and LinkedIn has created more popularity among users with no end in sight. Due to this apparent stability, many people are now wondering about the benefits of social media networking. Nowadays Social networking sites created a new trend of approach to make the business even to reach the end user, no doubt that the bigger social networking sites out there are making huge profits, and so are the companies that advertise through them. Some might argue that these websites are making money off of their users, and that they?re just using their members. Still, most people who belong to social networking sites don?t think they?re being taken advantage of.
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1.3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
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Research Methodology
Research methods are used to provide a systematic approach to research and helps in ordering the data collected in order to be to analyze it and conclude whether it answered a particular question or not. There are basically, two types of researches, Primary research and secondary research. We have used both the researches in our study. Our primary research supports the knowledge and curiosity behind our secondary research. There are generally two types of research methods, quantitative and qualitative. These methods can be used together or separately, one should choose the method most appropriate to the purpose of the thesis. The two approaches mainly differ in how to collect and analyze data. Quantitative method is focusing on statistical instruments and how to prove relations between different variables Further more, it is characterized by a large sample which is examined via forms, statistical methods and analysis of the data. An advantage of quantitative research is the high degree of objectivity and due to the large scope of observations it is possible to make generalizations. Qualitative method on the other hand, means research that generates descriptive data. It is said that the qualitative method reflects upon something and that the data collection in this method is focusing on so called "soft" data. The purpose of the thesis is to get industry opinions and analyze them, Thus Quantitative method was used.
The research with consumers was extremely important for this study. The relevance of audience criteria to media comparisons hinges on the assumption that media effectiveness is a function of the extent to which audiences possess characteristics predictive of the future purchase of advertised items. Which further has various aspects to it like likeliness towards a particular medium of entertainment, what builds more trust inside a consumer, or what is most action focused etc. Thus a research was carried out to study the behavioral aspects of consumers in context of their responses to various medium of advertising.
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Method of Research
A) Primary Research: Primary research was carried out using various research tools. Primary research carried various interviews, and questionnaires. It was basically taken from two perspectives, One was the company perspective and the other was the consumer perspective. B) Secondary Research: Secondary research was needed in the study, so as to understand all the previous researches, studies, and derivation in the above field of media comparisons for advertising. In our secondary research, we studied various research papers of multiple authors and publications to get the larger picture of the situation. Our secondary research is cited in various places in the research paper. The basic purpose of the secondary research is to back up the actions behind the primary research with the knowledge. The method used for the research was Questionnaires. For the purpose of said research, three different questionnaires were designed having different objectives each. The questions used in the questionnaire were ? Demographic Questions ? Multiple choice questions with one answer ? Multiple choice question with multiple answeres ? Rating scales ? Open ended, single textbox questions Methods of data collection The survey method helped to identify the reach of the brand among its target audience, ways of impact, usage of these social networking sites and access to these form of communication. And the content analysis is another method used to analyze the communication strategy of different social networking sites with certain parameters among top three Indian social networking sites which are tabulated with results.
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Research design This research study adopted survey and content analysis in order to find the effectiveness and the impact of communication in branding any product or the service among the target market through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitte, Orkut, linkedIn and other Online Resources.
Survey Survey was conducted randomly among Face book, Twitter, Orkut, and various online resources like mail ID, Forum and user community, by sending questionnaire through online to collect the individual opinion from the respondents.
Sampling Non probability sampling technique is used to collect the opinion
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2. DATA COLLECTION & ANALYSIS 2.1 DATA COLLECTION 2.2 DATA ANALYSIS
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Data and Data Analysis
DATA COLLECTION ,SOURCES OF DATA COLLECTION PRIMARY DATA Primary data are those data which is collected by researcher by self and In primary data collection, you collect the data yourself using methods such as interviews and questionnaires. The key point here is that the data you collect is unique to you and your research and, until you publish, no one else has access to it. There are many methods of collecting primary data and the main methods include: Questionnaires, interviews, focus group interviews, observation, case-studies, diaries, critical incidents portfolios.
Here in this research the Questionnaire / Interview method is used for data collection.
Researcher go personally to take oral interview and collect the data according to their feedback.
SECONDARY DATA
Secondary data are those, which have already been collected by someone else and have already been passed through the statistical process.
According to Dessel-"Data collected by other persons".
All the data has been collected from internal sources that includes: ? Magazines ? Books ? Websites ? Reports ? Files ? Available projects and Thesis.
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Data Analysis
Sample size : 100
1. Ratio of male - female on social networking sites. Gender Respondents Male 57 Female 43
Gender Ratio on social Networking sites
Male Female
43% 57%
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2. Age group of social network site users Age Group
Below 18 18-24 24-36 36+
Respondents 132138 28
Ratio of Age Group
Below 18 18-24 24-36 36+
28% %
13% 21
38%
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3.
Educational qualification of SNS User's Respondents 8 195419
Educational qualification 10th 12th Graduation Post Graduation
Education qualification of SNS User's
10th 12th Graduation Post Graduation
19 %
%
8 19%
54%
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4. SNS Users By Occupation Occupation Students Employed Self Employed Business Man Respondents 4834 8 10
SNS users by occupation
Students Employed Self Employed Business Man
%
8
10%
48%
34%
54
5. How often do you use internet ?
Once a week 2-3 days a week 1-2 hrs a day More Than 3 hrs a day Respondents 121930 39
Uses of Internet
Once a week 2-3 days a week 1-2 hrs a day More Than 3 hrs a day
12% 39% 19%
30%
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5. From where you access Internet ?
Place Home Office Cyber Café Others
Respondents 4226 1220
Place where Internet acces from
Home Office Cyber Café Others
20% 42% 12%
26%
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7 . Are you aware of social networking site ? Yes No 98 2
Awareness about SNS
Yes 2 No
%
98%
57
8. How often do you "Log In" those Social Networking Sites ? Frequency Once a week Daily 2-3 Times More than 3 Times Respondents 2 1842 38
Frequency of Log In
Once a week Daily 2-3 Times 2 More than 3 Times
%
18% 38%
42%
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9. How many social networking site's profile do you have ?
No. of SNS One Two Three Four More than Four
Respondents 28 6216 12
No. of SNS Profile
One Two Three 2 8% Four More Than Four
% 12% 16%
62%
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10. Do you check online ads while surfing SNS ?
Yes No
68 32
% of Users who check Online ads
Yes No
32%
68%
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11. In which SNS do you find ads communicated well ?
Social Networking Sites Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Others
Respondents 35 6 32 12 15
Ads Communicated well In SNS
Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Others
15% 35% 12%
% 32%
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12. What kinds of ads have you come across in these sites ?
Types of Ads Web Banner Pop up Flash Video Others
Respondents 32 6 34 22 6
Types of Ads
Web Banner Pop up Flash Video Others
22%
%
6 % 32
% 34%
6
62
13. Do you like ads appearing in SNS ?
Yes No Neutral
42 14 44
Perception about ads
Yes No Neutral
44%
42%
14%
63
14. How frequently you click on these ads coming on your way ?
Response
Often Sometimes Never Depending on ads
Respondents 38 33 4 25
Frequency of clicking ads
Often Sometimes Never Depending on ads
25%
38%
4 %
33%
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15. Which sites consists more ads ?
Social Networking Sites Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Others
Respondents 45 3 32 12 8
Sites Consists more ads
Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Others
% 12%
8
45%
32% % 3
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16 . Do you agree with Impact of communication of these ads ?
Response Agree Disagree Neutral
Respondents 68 22 10
Impact of Ads
Agree Disagree Neutral
10% 22%
%
68
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Findings/Conclusions and Recommendations 3.1 Conclusion 3.2 Constraints & Limitations 3.3 Recommendations
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Conclusion
Communication about the product or service provides a major contribution to brand competition in the market. It not only provides information about a product or service but also promotes creative innovation. Besides advertising, it also facilitates consumer satisfaction. The hidden fact is that no brand can progress without effective communication strategy to attract their customers or users. Big and small variety of brands nowadays laid their base on social network communication to get recognized in the target market. Social networking sites users of Face book, Twitter, Orkut, Linked, Google Plus and Others have become a personal, product and corporate branding hub in India nowadays in digital era. Every brand that exists on social networking sites has the same core features and benefits, such as the ability to create a page, share resources, add multimedia and much more. Social networking sites are filled with potential users who are mainly young adults. They spend more time in these networking sites due to heavy commercial contents, entertainment and social gathering. So, product or service communicators throng their ads in these areas with more and more interactive and with fascinating factors so that their brand identity is developed among the right choice of focused audience. Advertisers and brands uses social networking sites as the major resource for their promotion and developing brand identity among the focused market.
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Limitations and Constraints
1. Budgetary constraints - gathering and processing data can be very expensive. 2. Time constraints - Since it is not a big limitation but generally people refuse these type of online survey. 3. Reliability of the data - the value of any research findings depend critically on the accuracy of the data collected. Data quality can be compromised via a number of potential routes, e.g., leading questions, unrepresentative samples, biased interviewers etc. 4. The data is gathered is not any geographic located so it is generalized data for whole world, But it can change according to the Geographical location.
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SUGGESTIONS Communication should be more preferred than advertising. People do not prefer buying products through social networking sites. So, if the brand is communicated well and remembered by the audience, then it is a greatest success to the company for their promotion through social media. Promotional way of advertising is best: the usual banner ads and pop-up ads make the users to ignore them. So advertising must be interactive, promotional and in innovative form to hold the audience. It should target the individuals than the mass. If an ad is hosted for a group then that would be no advantage in delivering specified information. Adding more multimedia elements.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.academicjournals.org/jmcs Impacts of advertisements in social networking sites By- O.S.Karthick babu, D.Senthil kumar https://twitter.com/about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter http://in.linkedin.com/about-us http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkedin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut http://www.linkedin.com/company/linkedin http://www.google.com/images
http://www.optimus01.co.za/why-is-online-marketing-so-effective/ http://www.ehow.com/facts_5036191_effectiveness-internet-advertising.html http://www.clicksor.com/publishers/adformat
http://www.affiliateseeking.com/forums/general-marketing/917-forms-of-online-advertising.html
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Annexure
Questionaire For Online Survey
This Is an Online survey for measuring of effectiveness of advertisement through Social Networking Site. Note : Result will be Used only for Academics purpose, It can't be used for any type of commercialization.
1. Sex Male Female 2. Age Group Below 18 18-24 24-36 36+ 3. Educational qualification 10th 12th Graduation Post Graduation 4. Occupation Student Employed Self Employed Businessman 5. How often do you use internet ? Once a week 2-3 days a week 1-2 hrs a day More Than 3 hrs a day
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6. From where you access Internet ? Home Office Cyber Cafe Other: 7. Are you aware of social networking site ? Yes No 8. How often do you "Log In" those Social Networking Sites ? Once a week Daily 2-3 times a day More Than 3 Times a day Other: 9. How many social networking site's profile do you have ? One Two Three Four More Than Four 10. Do you check online ads while surfing SNS ? Yes No 11. In which SNS do you find ads communicated well ? Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Other:
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12. What kinds of ads have you come across in these sites ? Web Banner Pop Ups Flash Video Other: 13. Do you like ads appearing in SNS ? Yes No Neutral 14. How frequently you click on these ads coming on your way ? Often Sometine Never Depending on Ads 15. Which sites consists more ads ? Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Other: 16. Do you agree with Impact of communication of these ads ? Agree Disagree Neutral
Submit
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doc_390978614.doc
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors and a complex set of the dyadic ties between these actors. The social network perspective provides a clear way of analyzing the structure of whole social entities.[1] The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.
A comparative study of the effectiveness of Advertising on different social networking ? The cases of Facebook, Orkut,Twitter & LinkedIn
TABLE OF CONTENTS ? Declaration ……………………………………………………………………… ...2 ? Acknowledgements………………………… ..…………………………………… 3 ? Executive Summary……………………………………… ...…………………… ..4 ? Chapter 1: Project Details…………………………………… ..……………… .....6
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1.1 Introduction 1.2 Purpose & Scope of study 1.3 Methodology ? Chapter 2: Data and Data Analysis………………… ..………………………… 51 2.1 Data Collection 2.2 Data Analysis ? Chapter 3: Findings/Conclusions and Recommendations…………………… ...69 3.1 Conclusion 3.2 Constraints & Limitations 3.3 Recommendations ? Chapter 4: Annexure & Bibliography………………………………………… 73 ? Bibliography………………………………………………………………… ......73 ? Annexure…………………………………………………………………… .......74
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Executive Summary
Internet is the emerging information technology with the credibility of immediacy and fastness, thus, it brings globalization in every aspects of communication. Communication through internet is more specified, with effective interactive strategy among its users. In recent days, internet advertising has taken new forms which have more advantages over the traditional mediums like print media, television and radio. Marketing communication is becoming precise, personal, interesting, interactive and social. Different strategies of communication are followed in various social networking sites like Face book, Twitter and Orkut. They not only create impact over the audience but also make them interact with the marketing statistics created. People get attached to brand communication in social networking sites than usual banner and pop up ads. These networking sites bring more interactive communication with advertising. Social networking sites will become the primary arena for highly targeted marketing and advertising. Therefore, it is necessary to study the effectiveness of brand communication strategy followed in social networking sites which are mainly accessed by Indian users. This research attempts to find the effectiveness of brand communication strategy in promoting and advertising their brand in social networking sites. The effectiveness is determined with the help of survey from people who use these sites, and the content of three social networking sites is analyzed.
The proposed study includes the perspective of the consumers . It attempts to answer the following questions: 1. Is social network advertising effective in sales for companies or is it simply ending up in attracting junk traffic? 2. Which is the most preferred Social Network advertising approach? 3. Does a customer like being approached on social networking sites?
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1.INTRODUCTION
1.1 Project Details
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SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES (Social Networking Sites) We define social networking sites as web based services that allow individuals to construct a public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site. Other way of defining Social networking sites is that it is a place where people can use networks of online friends and group memberships to keep in touch with current friends, reconnect with old friends or create real-life friendships through similar interests or groups. Besides establishing important social relationships, social networking members can share their interests with other like-minded members by joining groups and forums. Some networking can also help members find a job or establish business contacts. Social networking sites include Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, orkut and so on. Most social networking websites also offer additional features. In addition to blogs and forums, members can express themselves by designing their profile page to reflect their personality. The most popular extra features include music and video sections. Members can read bios of their favorite music artists from the artist's profile page as well as listen to their favorite songs and watch music videos. The video section can include everything from member-generated videos from hundreds of subjects to TV clips and movie trailers. What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. On many of the large sites, participants are not necessarily "networking" or looking to meet new people instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network. While SNS have implemented a wide variety of technical features, their backbone consists of visible profiles that display an articulated list of friends who are also users of the system. Profiles are unique pages where one can "type oneself into being". After joining an SNS, an individual is asked to fill out forms containing a series of questions. The profile is generated using the answers to these questions, which typically include descriptions such as age, location, interests, and an "about me" Section. Most sites also encourage users to upload a profile photo. Some sites allow users to enhance their profiles by adding multimedia content or modifying their profile?s look and feel. Others, such as Facebook, allow users to add modules ("Applications") that enhance their profile.
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After joining a social network site, users are prompted to identify others in the system with whom they have a relationship. The label for these relationships differs depending on the site popular terms include "Friends," "Contacts" and "Fans". Most Social Networking Sites require bidirectional confirmation for Friendship, but some do not. These one - directional ties are sometimes labeled as "Fans" or "Followers". The public display of connections is a crucial component of Social Networking Sites. The friends list contains links to each friend?s profile, enabling viewers to traverse the network graph by clicking through the Friends lists. On most sites, the list of Friends is visible to anyone who is permitted to view the profile, although there are exceptions. Many Social Networking Sites also provide a mechanism for in users to leave messages on their Friends? profiles. This feature typically involves leaving "comments," Although sites employ various labels for this feature. In addition, Social Networking Sites often have a private messaging feature similar to webmail. While both private messages and comments are popular most of the major Social Networking Sites, they are not universally available. Beyond profiles, Friends, comments, and private messaging, Social Networking Sites vary greatly in their features and user base. Some have photo - sharing or video sharing capabilities others have built - blogging and instant messaging technology. While Social Networking Sites are often designed to be widely accessible, many attract homogeneous populations initially, so it is not uncommon to find groups using sites to segregate themselves by nationality, age, educational level, or other factors that typically segment society even if that was not the intention of the designers.
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Some Top Social Networking Sites : Facebook.com
Homepage of Facebook.com
Facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users, more than half of whom use Facebook on a mobile device. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum,Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. Facebook now allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site. In May 2005, Accel partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer added $1 million of his own money to the pot.
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According to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site's terms of service. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-thedecade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?" Critics, such as Facebook Detox, state that Facebook has turned into a national obsession in the United States, resulting in vast amounts of time lost and encouraging narcissism. Quantcast estimates Facebook has 138.9 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May 2011. According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% (129.5 million) of the U.S. population had a Facebook account. Nevertheless, Facebook's market growth started to stall in some regions, with the site losing 7 million active users in the United States and Canada in May 2011.
Offices of Facebook Inc.
Menlo Park Headquarters Facebook Ireland Ltd. Facebook Hyderabad
Revenue of Facebook.com
Year Revenue Growth
2006 $52 ---------------2007 $150 188% 2008 $280 87% 2009 $775 177% 2010 $2,000 158% 2011 $4,270 114%
Facebook generally has a lower clickthrough rate (CTR) for advertisements than most major Web sites. According to BusinessWeek.com, banner advertisements on Facebook have generally received one-fifth the number of clicks compared to those on the Web as a whole, although specific comparisons can reveal a much larger disparity. For example, while Google users click on the first advertisement for search results an average of 8% of the time (80,000 clicks for every one million searches), Facebook's users click on advertisements an average of 0.04% of the time (400 clicks for every one million pages).
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Orkut
Home Page of Orkut.com Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google. The service is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competitors Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil. As of October 2011, 59.1% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 27.1% and Japan with 6.7%. Originally hosted in California, in August 2008 Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte. This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues. As of October 2012, Alexa traffic ranked Orkut.com 746th and Orkut.com.br 738th in the world; the web site currently has over 33 million active users worldwide. Orkut was quietly launched on January 22, 2004 by Google, the search engine company. Orkut Büyükökten, a Turkish software engineer, developed it as an independent project while working at Google. This project was made mainly due to the objective of finding a girl friend and not at all with the objective of making a social networking website for all others to enjoy and that is
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why it was updated afterwards. While previously working for Affinity Engines, he had developed a similar system, In Circle, intended for use by university alumni groups. In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Büyükkökten and Google based Orkut on in Circle code. The allegation is based on the presence of 9 identical bugs in Orkut that also exist in In Circle.
Home Page of LinkedIn.com LinkedIn Corporation is a social networking website for people in professional occupations. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of January 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 200 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech,Polish, Korean, Indonesian, and Malay. Quantcast
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reports LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally. In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace. LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD". LinkedIn's CEO is Jeff Weiner, previously a Yahoo! Inc. executive. The company was founded by Reid Hoffman and founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri). Founder Reid Hoffman, previously CEO of LinkedIn, is now Chairman of the Board. Deep Nishar is Vice President of Products.LinkedIn is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in Omaha, Chicago, New York, London and Dublin. It is funded by Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and the European Founders Fund. LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006. Through January 2011, the company had received a total of $103 million of investment. In late 2003, Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the company.In June 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-money valuation of approximately $1 billion. In 2010, LinkedIn opened a European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland,[received a $20 million investment from Tiger Global Management LLC at a valuation of approximately $2 billion, and announced its first acquisition, Mspoke, and improved its 1% premium subscription ratio. In October of that year Silicon Valley Insider ranked the company No. 10 on its Top 100 List of most valuable start ups. By December, the company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets.
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Revenue Model of LinkedIn.com
The main revenue model of LinkedIn.com is Google adsense. Through which its shows different types of advertisement and generate revenue.
Some Facts About LinkedIn
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Twitter.com
Home Page of Twitter.com
Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140characters, known as "tweets". Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and by July, the social networking site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million registered users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as "the SMS of theInternet." Unregistered users can read tweets, while registered users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of apps for mobile devices. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, with additional servers and offices in New York City, Boston, and San Antonio
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Facts about Twitter
Area served Founder(s) Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams, Biz Stone Key people Jack Dorsey (Chairman) Dick Costolo (CEO) IndustryI nternet Revenue US$140 million (2010 est.) Worldwide Employees Website 900+ (2012) twitter.com
Written in JavaScript,Ruby,Scala,Java Alexa rank 10 (February 2013) Type of site Social network
service,microblogging Registration Required to post, follow, or be followed Users 200 million (active February 2013) Available in Launched Multilingual July 15, 2006[9]
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What is Online Advertising
On line advertising is similar to other forms of communication except for one critical difference that is Internet. Consumer behavior follows a model radically different from traditional advertising media. This model can be explained as the progression 'Awareness - Interest - Desire Action'. All these activities occur simultaneously in Internet advertising. Online advertising entails, placing of electronic messages on a web site or email platform which achieves the following purpose? Generates awareness for the brand. ? Stimulates interest /preference for a product or service. ? Provides the means to contact the advertiser for information orto make a purchase.
History of Internet Advertising
Advertising has faithfully served the print industry for 200 years, and was applied to the Internet with every expectation of success. Web advertising began with Center and Siegel?s in famous Green Card Lottery message on the Usenet site in April 1994 and was followed in October by advertising placements for AT&T, MCI, Sprint, and Volvo on Hot-wired and finally the idea caught on. The Advertisement grew in sophistication, and today there are Static, rotating, scrolling, animated, flash and interstitial banner ads a which are designed to generate traffic, increase brand awareness and generate leads and sales. Internet companies were founded on advertising revenues, and for some years the companies prospered. Rate depended on: i. The Type of advertisement. ii. Where it appeared on the WebPages. iii. How it integrated with content. iv. How well it matched the advertiser?s target audience
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Online advertising has to offer: 1. Scalability Like television commercials, it doesn't cost very much to increase the reach of an online ad campaign. There is no need to print additional copies of a magazine, or to create and mail directmail pieces. 2. Hot demographics The online community is more affluent, better educated, and younger and more willing to spend than the population at large. More and more people go online and the number is ever increasing. 3. Targeted messages Unlike broadcast and print media, the Internet allows advertisers to target exactly who will see their ads, and in what context. Web publications serve every conceivable audience, from the mass-market obscure niche groups. Beyond that, the technology leads target customers by their computing platform (PCs or Macintoshes), Web browser(specific versions of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer),domain type (. com, .edu, .gov, .mil, or .net) or individual domains (America Online, IBM, Prodigy). 4. Broad and flexible reach While the Net cannot yet match television's market penetration, the size of the online audience is growing very quickly. More importantly, because you buy online ads by the impression, you can buy as much or as little of that audience as you desire. And that's true no matter how popular or specialized the site on which your ads run- as a rule, advertising costs depend on how many impressions you buy, not on the size of a site's audience. 5. Cost-effective Partly because you pay only for exactly what you're getting, online advertising can be extremely competitive with other forms of advertising. If you buy 1,000 ad impressions, for example, you know that exactly 1,000 people will see your ad.
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6. Detailed tracking and measurement Compared to online advertising, traditional media advertising is like shooting in the dark. The Web allows advertisers to gather detailed information on who saw an ad, when, in what context, how many times and so on. Better still; you get this information instantly, not weeks later when it's too late to adjust your campaign. Of course, not every site currently provides this level of feedback, and not every advertiser knows what to do with it. Over a period of time, however, this is likely to become one of Web advertising's most important competitive advantages. 7. The ability to extend the transaction Traditionally, advertising was a one-way mechanism. Apart from techniques like toll-free numbers pitched in infomercials and mail-in coupons in print publications, there was no way for customers to act on the information in the ads. On the Web, though, interested customers can click, learn more, and actually buy on the spot. There's simply nothing more powerful.8. 8. Good Creativity Creative Design of Home page is very important for the surfer to get hooked on to the site. Within seconds the user should get an idea about the site and where to go within it. If the opportunity is missed the user many never return. 9. Hence Content is King Content is the most important element of a site. Content rich Web pages lure users. The value on the web is information. The beauty and challenge of the Web is that it gives the user, the ability to personalize non-static information and choose exactly what she sees. Unlike commercials or print ads, a Web ad banner is only the beginning of the process. While your banner may present only your branding message, interested prospects can always click on it to go directly to your Web site. Once there, they can access as much material on your company and products as you care to present. Graphics & the visual elements also play an important role in the users decision to stay or leave. Use of creative concepts, colors, movement &sound enhance the chances of the user staying longer on the site. In addition to all this the creators of web sites & on line advertising must take into consideration the factors like :-
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a) How fast does the site download, b) How easily navigable the site is, c) What is the domain name, d) What are the other publicity & advertising activities which building traffic to the site? If all such parameters are considered while selecting the web sites for online advertising, the impact of such advertising will definitely be felt. Online advertising is one medium, which helps to generate awareness about the brand being advertised, it can help in creating an image, it helps in educating the audience and also builds interactivity & direct response. No other traditional medium has the ability to give all of this. We are still at the experimental stage but many clients have already started allocating a budget towards online advertising & web is being considered not only as an advertising medium but also as a marketing tool. Hence online advertising, though slow to take off, will definitely be a medium of the future.
Internet Users Population Chart
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Advantages of Online Advertisement 1. Target Marketing A major advantage of the web is the ability to target very specific groups of individuals with a minimum of waste coverage. In the consumer market. Through personalization and other targeting techniques, sites are becoming more tailored to meet once need and want.
2. Message Tailoring As a result of precise targeting, messages can be designed to appeal to the specific needs and wants of the target audience. The interactive capability of the net makes it possible to carry on one-to-one marketing with increased success in both the business and the consumer markets.
3. Interactive Capabilities The interactive nature of the web leads to a degree of customer involvement. Site visitors are already interested enough in the company and/ or products to visit.
4. Information access Perhaps the greatest advantage of the Internet is its availability as an information source. Internet users can find a plethora of information about almost any topic of merely by conducting search through one of the search engines. Once they have visited a particular site, uses can garner a wealth of information regarding product specification, costs, purchase information, and so on. Links will direct them to even more information if it is desired.
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5. Creativity Creatively design sites can enhance company's image leading to repeat visits, and positively position the company or organization in the consumer's mind. 6.Exposure For many seller companies with limited budget the www (world wide web) enables them to gain exposure to potential customers that heretofore would have been impossible. For a function of the investment that would be required using traditional media, companies can gain national and even international exposure in a timely manner. 7. Speed For those requiring information on a company, its products, and /or its service offerings, the Internet is the quickest means of acquiring this information.
Disadvantages of Internet 1. Measurement problem One the greatest disadvantage of the net is the lack of reliability of the research numbers generate. A Quick review of forecasts, audience profiles, and other statistics offered by research providers will demonstrate a great deal of variance leading to a serious lack of validity and reliability. One of the industry's largest and most sited trade publication has written an expose of a heavily sited Internet research company, referring to the number it provides as "scary" feathers have stressed concern over the fact that most sites figures or not audited, which mainly to rampant cheating in the respect of the number reported.2. 2. Audience characteristic Due imparts to the accelerating growth of the net, audience characteristic change quickly. Numbers reported may be completed quickly and are often vary from one provided to the next.
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3. Web Snarl At times, downloading information from the net takes a long time. When there are a number of users, the time increasing and some Sites may be inaccessible due to too many visitors. For many users who expect speed, this is a major disadvantage. 4. Costs The cost of doing business on the MAT continues to increase. While it is possible to establish a site in expensively, establishing a good side and maintaining it is becoming more and more costly. As noted earlier , Levi?s for the cost of maintaining a site is considered "world-Class " was prohibitive and one of the reason for abandoning its E-commerce efforts. 5. Limited production quality Although it is improving, net advertising does not offer the capability of many competitive media for a production standpoint. While the advent of advanced technologies and rich medium is narrowing the gap, the net still lags behind some areas. 6. Poor reach While the Internet numbers are growing in leaps and bounds, its six is still far behind that of television. As a result, interest companies have turned to traditional medium to achieve reach and awareness goals. In addition statistics says that only a small percentage of sites on the Internet are captured and that the top 50 sites listed account for 95 percent of the site visited. 7. Language If I am selling the goods through the media the buyer prefer to get the information of the products or services with his own language but the advertiser has no option than to advertise in one single language which is a major disadvantage. Given below is the comparison between Traditional and Web Advertising that will signify the importance of in today's world.
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Traditional Advertisement
Bound by geography and location Advertisement costs are relativelyhigh Lead times for implementation are substantial
Online Adverisements
The Web market is borderless Web Advertisement rates are relatively low
Lead times are virtually non-existent Web marketing is based on high Limited interactivity exists. level of interactivity Customer feedback is immediate Getting customer feedback is a painful process Tracking the effectiveness of the Advertisement efforts is Effectiveness can be easily relatively difficult monitored On the internet Marketing efforts are restricted bytime and space Advertisement can becarried out 24 hours a day, 365 days a year Web advertising is dynamic and Traditional marketing is static multimedia supported Web advertising requires the user Traditional advertising does not invoke immediate action To take immediate action - like Clicking on the banner ad and thus going to your site to know more of company The user has a high attention level Advertisements are passively received while he is on the net. Thus advertisements get noticed, remembered, and acted upon Here, while searching for travel Advertisements are ubiquitous sites, ads related to travel agencies are displayed Advertisements are very focused. Advertising does not target a focuse daudience PC software can be displayed to PC users, while MAC users are Not shown those ads
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WHY SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES ARE USED AS AN ADVERTISING TOOL? From the last decade, social networking is on the rise for business reasons and also for personal use. With its popularity increasing day by day, the need for business tables to go social is indispensable. There are four main reasons for social networks used as advertising tools. 1. Cost efficiency- Advertising on social networks is relatively cheap compared to other Traditional media, it usually has a similar or expanded reach at much lower costs. In Addition, it is possible for companies to generate free publicity through creative Advertising techniques. There have been a number of successful viral marketing Campaigns in YouTube and Facebook in the recent years. Creating a page for a brand in facebook is free which is cost efficiency and also creates a large number of active followers. 2. Large reach- Since social networking websites has millions of active users, it has become more popular and acts as a good medium for sharing their SOCIAL EXPERIENCE and helps in building relationships. The impact for a social network is the reach of an advertisement on a large scale. With its demand for advertisement is on the rise, displaying an advertisement is significant in such networks is essential for its improvement in potential. The reach by a social network is greater than any other mass media of its kind. 3. Targeted advertising- Advertisers have access to a great deal of information about Users and their interests, allowing them to customize and target their advertisements to a degree not yet seen in any other advertising medium. For example, if a user lists "pro Wrestling" as an interest on their Facebook profile, the websites advertising system Will generate advertisements based on that particular interest. However, this can raise Privacy issues: Facebook?s Beacon targeted advertising system suffered a great deal of backlash and had to be modified heavily to appease its users. 4. Time spent online- People are spending increasing amounts of time online, especially on social networking websites, at the expense of traditional advertising media such as television and newspapers. This can be viewed as a result of many of the traditional functions - news, television shows - of the old advertising Media being shifted online to social networks such as Digg and YouTube. As a result, Advertisers are increasingly looking for ways to reach out to consumers who are Spending more and more time online.
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Types of Online Advertising Google AdWords (Pay-per-click Advertising)
Pay per click advertising is an excellent alternative for companies who have the financial resources and can make an investment in order to bring targeted traffic to their websites. Like SEO traffic, AdWords is considered targeted because people are actually typing in keyword phrases that are relevant to your products and services before clicking on your advertisement. This can bring a flood of traffic to your online business very quickly, and this is an excellent choice as long as you?re able to turn a profit. That?s where the problem usually lies for small companies who are inexperienced with this form of advertising. There is a lot of competition in pay per click campaigns these days, and it is very easy to waste a great deal of money if you don?t have the experience. Many e-commerce stores get wrapped up in bidding wars that cost product margins to drop substantially. Therefore, if you?re going to give this form of advertising a try, just make sure that you take an excellent training course and be ready to invest some money in the beginning while you figure out the entire process.
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Banner Advertising
This form of online advertising is even older than the search engines themselves, and the concept is pretty simple. You simply put some sort of banner (usually with a catchy image and headline) on a relevant website. Users who choose to click the banners will end up on your website and hopefully will make a purchase. The problem is that these days, web users have developed "banner blindness" so only a small percentage will actually click on your ad. With this in mind, you need to make sure that you?re not paying very much for your advertising, especially if you are paying a certain amount per impressions (impressions means that your ad would show up a certain number of times and you will get charged regardless of whether anyone actually clicks on your advertisement).
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Newsletter Advertising
You can contact webmasters and email programs to ask them if they are willing to sell ad space in their newsletter or e-zine. This way you will have access to their subscribers and be able to reach them with a simple low cost advertisement. The ad can be something as simple as a text link that states your website is a sponsor of that publication. Generous newsletter publishers may allow you to have an entire page space on their sent publications to give you maximize exposure. This makes it much simpler to reach an audience that wants to read the email with your website content information included.
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Affiliate Marketing
Whether you specialize in physical products or in digital information products like e-books and other courses, affiliate marketing is a great form of online advertising. The major advantage is that you don?t actually have to pay your affiliates a commission until the sale is made. If you do a good job of promoting your affiliate program in the appropriate marketplaces, then these affiliates can do most of the legwork for you like writing articles, using pay per click advertising themselves, and ultimately driving traffic to your product in any number of ways. Unfortunately, there are still many website owners outside of traditional Internet marketing who are not familiar with the concept of affiliate commissions and may think there is something shady going on. So you simply have to be a salesperson and convince people that your affiliate program is legitimate and profitable. You also have to make sure to choose an excellent network such as Clickbank or Paydotcom.
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Social Media
Have you heard of Facebook? Of course you have. What you may not realize is that social media can be used as a form of online advertising, and Facebook ads are excellent examples. At the same time, however, you have to realize that most people are simply using these social networks to hang out with their friends and engaging in entertainment and conversations. Major companies are already expressing doubts about the efficacy of social media marketing campaigns. There are now entire books being written about social media ROI (return on investment), so this tells you that you need to be careful not to waste a lot of time in busy work without evaluating the results. However Facebook does have its advantages as it uses an advertising system that is very simple to implement and offers a wide scope of coverage in the Facebook website. Only Facebook users that are within the specific demographic you choose will be able to see the advertising. This helps to narrow down who sees advertising so you are not wasting your money on people who are not going to be interested in what your website has to offer.
Some Other Ad Format Inline text links
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Inline text links are ads that appear as a brief text description in boxes with clear call-to-actions, prompting users to learn more information from partners' websites. These ads only appear when the mouse pointer is moved over certain words and is perfectly relevant to the content. Inline text links are great when you want to save valuable space on your Web pages, they are also similar to newspaper headlines that raise interest for a distinctive topic. With the possibility of frequent format changes, very few restrictions and no spending for the development of graphical ad formats, inline text links are a pure, yet effective option to advertise cross the Internet.
Text ads
Advertisements displayed as simple, text-based hyperlinks are known as Text Ads. As their name suggests, text ads they do not include graphic images. Text ads are sold on non-search websites and can be served either by individual websites, or a publisher?s own ad servers.
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Display Ads
Graphical advertisements featured on websites are known as Display Ads. Display ads are often available in many standard shapes and sizes, including: banners, leader boards, skyscrapers, large boxes, and other sized graphical ads. Display ads use eye-catching visuals to quickly grab catch the attention of website visitors browsing the pages on which they are featured. Display ads are sold on non-search websites and can be served either by individual websites, or a publisher?s own ad servers.
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Pop-Up Ads
Advertisements that appear to "pop up" in a new window as users browse a website are known as Pop-Up Ads. Hover ads, floating ads and slide-in ads ads are all considered pop-up ads. (Sometimes these ads are also known as Pop-Under Ads, depending on whether they are displayed over or underneath the current web content being browsed.) The use of Flash and DHTML ads has risen in recent years in an effort to counter the increased usage of pop-up blockers.
Flash / DHTML Ads
These kinds of ads incorporate Flash animation or other motion graphics. Ads may be animated display ads in more traditional shapes and sizes, or, as of late, they can be sophisticated ads that function similarly to pop-up ads but with much deeper integration into the overall design of the site.
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Interstitial Ads
Interstitial ads appear between web pages that the user requests. For example, an interstitial ad may appear after you click on a link in an excerpt to view the full content of news story. Because interstitial ads load in the background and do not interrupt the users immediate browsing experience, they are a preferred method of delivering ads with rich media, streaming video, and/or large graphics.
Video Ads
With the popularity of online video watching, video ads have become a viable means of distributing rich advertising content. Currently video ads can either be content created entirely by the advertiser, or "in video" ads that will show your ad within a video. Major search properties like Google (through YouTube), MSN, Yahoo, and AOL all offer advertising on their video websites.
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On-Site Sponsorships On-Site sponsorships are ads (typically just a company?s logo) that can be bought on individual websites. Sponsorship ads typically appear in an area on the website reserved for sponsors and often noted as such. Advertorials Advertisements in editorial form that appear to contain objectively-written opinions are known as paid editorial ads, or "Advertorials". Online advertorials are typically featured on publisher?s websites and promote products and services related to the website?s content. Some ad networks will develop, optimize, and write your advertorial and place it on their ad network.
Targeting Methods
Contextual Targeting When ads are served based on related content a user is currently reading or browsing online, it is known as contextual targeting. For example, if you are reading an article on a news website about sports, you may see contextual ads for sports gear, memorabilia, or game tickets. Contextual ads are purchased through major search properties like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and through many other contextual ad networks. Ad relevancy is typically determined by algorithms that will assess the appropriateness of the ad in relation to the displayed content. Behavioral Targeting When ads are served based on user behavior, it is known as behavioral targeting. Behavioral targeting is based on a variety of online factors such as recent online purchases, searches, and browsing history, as well as demographic details such age or gender. For example, if you recently visited a real estate website, you may see behavioral ads selling mortgages. Geo-Targeting / Local Advertising When ads are served based on a user?s geographical location, it is known as geo-targeting. For advertisers interested in targeting users within a specific locality or region, geo-targeted online advertising is an effective solution. An increasing number of websites now offer geo-targeting capabilities. Local advertising also includes network buys through radio, television and newspaper websites, as well as localized search engines and directories such as Yahoo! Local, Google Local, and AOL City Guide.
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Advertisement Types on Social Networking Sites
Facebook Advertising
With over 500 million active users across the globe, Facebook is the largest social network online today. Because of its popularity and ability to target users based on their profile data, Facebook is a very attractive platform for advertisers. Facebook offers simple image and text-based ads that are highly targeted toward user data, with the ability to test multiple ad versions to maximize the effectiveness of your campaign. Withcontrollable ad costs, flexible pricing structures like CPC and CPM, and its own tracking analytics, Facebook ads can be a very effective way to reach your target market.
LinkedIn Advertising
LinkedIn is the professional social network that boasts over 90 million members. LinkedIn offers several different advertising options that range in visibility and affordability, including self-service ads called DirectAds and more robust advertising options leveraging multiple display ad formats, as well as others.
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On LinkedIn, advertisers have the unique ability to target users by job title ad function, seniority, company name, company size, and industry. Larger ad buyers can target based on custom criteria such as Career Changes, Unemployed Professionals, Business Travelers, and Opinion Leaders, among others. Such granular professional targeting options make LinkedIn a very effective B2B advertising option.
Twitter Advertising
Twitter offers its own advertising options in the form of Promoted Tweets. Promoted Tweets are ordinary tweets that advertisers pay to highlight to a wider group of users. Displayed at the top of Twitter.com search results pages and in some users? tweet streams and third-party Twitter applications (such as TweetDeck), Promoted Tweets are very visible and retain all the functionality of a regular tweet. Since Promoted Tweets are essentially regular tweets, they are not an "ad" in the traditional sense and function more as an organic part of Twitter. Twitter also offers Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts.
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Looking for Advertisement patterns
If the Advertiser make use of cookies to analyze the path of each visitor, then they can start to make assumptions about what people are looking for and if they had trouble finding it. The trick is to look for patterns. The researcher, the comparison shopper and the buyer all have their own traffic patterns, and it?s up to you to serve them according to their needs. If people are always clicking from the product page to the warranty page and back, it?s good stewardship to put the pertinent information on the product page and save them a click. Watch where they go and then do what you can to make their way easier next time. The final consideration is how often people visit your site a combination of regency and frequency. It?s great that somebody came to your site 10 times in one day, but if that day was six months ago, it won ?t do you any good. The most desirable regency-frequency tally is different for different types of sites. If your name is Yahoo! or AOL, then you want all the people, all the time. Identifying prospects Identifying what pattern is the best indication of imminent procurement which depends upon the Review of the site path taken by those who completed the purchase and watch for it again. Your site can make special offer when a potential customer visits a certain number of times or looks at particular pages. And then you can go one step further, called Geniality?s a clever software that will determine the fewest attributes common to those who performed the desired act (purchase, register, subscribe, etc.). It shifts through mountains of data about your customers so you can more quickly recognize the ones who are statistically most likely to buy, and it can tell you which offer is the one most likely to make that sale. Taking all this into the consideration one can manage their site measurement of effectiveness.
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Online Advertising Operational Definition
Advertising Network A group of websites, which share a common banner server Typically, a sales organization, which manages the commerce and reporting. An ad network has the ability to deliver unique combinations of targeted audiences because they serve your banner or ad across multiple sites. Ad view An ad view, synonymous with ad impression, is a single ad that appears (usually in full view without scrolling) on a Web page when the page arrives at the viewer?s display. Ad views are what most Web sites sell or prefer to sell. A Web page may offer space for a number of ad views. In general, the term impression is more commonly used. Affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing is the use by a Web site that sells products of other Web sites, called affiliates, to help market the products. Amazon.com, the bookseller, created the first large-scale affiliate program and hundreds of other companies have followed since. Bandwidth The amount of information that can be transmitted over communications lines at one time. The higher the bandwidth, the faster the Web page loads. Limited bandwidth is the main reason for keeping pictures small. Just as it seems we will never have fast enough computers, it feels like we will never have enough bandwidth. The amount of research and development money being thrown at this problem should yield surprising results before long. Click According to ad industry recommended guidelines from FAST, a click is 'when a visitor interacts with an advertisement.' This does not apparently mean simple interacting with a rich media ad, but actually clicking on it so that the visitor is headed toward the advertiser?s destination. (It also does not mean that the visitor actually waits to fully arrive at the destination, but just that the visitor started going there).
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Click streams The electronic path a user takes while navigating from site to site, and within site, from page to page. Click Through The act of clicking on a banner or other ad, which takes the use through to the advertiser's Web site. Used as a counter point to impressions to judge the response-inducing power of the banner. Click Through Rate (CTR) - The response rate of an online advertisement, typically expressed as a percentage and calculated by taking the number of click through the ad received, dividing that number by the number of impressions and multiplying by 100 to obtain a percentage - Example 20clicks / 1,000 impressions = .02 x 100 = 2% CTR CPA Cost Per Action. The price paid by an advertiser for each „action' that a content site delivers. 'Action' may be a sale, a lead, successful form fill-out, a download of a software program or an ecommerce sale of a product. Both the action, price and terms of a CPA purchase are mutually agreed upon by the advertiser and content site and such a purchase typically involves a back end tracking system provided by the advertiser that allows the content site to view clicks and actions every 24 hours if they choose to do so. CPC Cost Per Click. The price paid by an advertiser to a content site. When buying on a Cost Per Click model, the advertiser and content site have mutually agreed that the content site will continue to display the advertiser?s ad creative until X number of clicks have been delivered - the amount purchased. As with other forms of online advertising, s dependent on content, audience reached and targeted delivery - Untargeted being owner priced, targeted to an affluent audience being at the high end of the rate scale.
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CPM (Cost Per Mile) Cost Per Thousand (Roman Numeral) impressions. The price paid by an advertiser for a content site displaying their banner 1,000 times. CPS (Cost Per Sale) Cost Per Sale. The price paid by an advertiser to a content site for each sale that results from a visitor who is referred from the content site to the advertiser?s site. This type of buying model is typically tracked with cookies, where the cookie is offered on the content site and read on the advertiser?s site at the success page after successful completion of one transaction/sale. Typical rates/bounties range between 5% and 25% of the retail price of the product or service being sold. See also CPA above. Cookies Client-side text file that is used by Web servers to store information about the site visitor and visitor behavior. Information pertaining to a site can only be ready the side that wrote the information. Used to identify repeat visitors and track visitor behavior. Effective Frequency The number of times an ad should be shown to one person to realize the highest impact of the ad without wasting impressions on that individual. Frequency The number of times a given person will see an ad in agiven time period. Gross Exposures/Gross Impressions - The total number of times an ad is shown, including duplicate showings to the same person. Hits Every time a file is sent by a server, be it text, graphic, video, and so on, it is recorded as a hit. Not a reliable gauge to compare different sites, as one page with five graphic elements will register six hits when viewed, while a page with no graphics will only register one hit.
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Impression The Opportunity To See (OTS) a banner or other ad by a surfer. When a page that includes a banner is viewed, it is considered an impression. Inventory - The amount of available space for banners on a Website that can be delivered in a given time period. Also known as the amount of gross impressions per month (or clicks if the publishers is selling on a Cost Per Click rate model) available for sale to advertisers by a Web publisher. Link A hypertext connection between two documents, image maps, graphics, and the like. Page view When a Web page is requested by somebody through a browser. Page views are often used to track the number of impressions a banner gets. Run-of-network A run-of-network ad is one that is placed to run on all sites within a given network of sites. Ad sales firms such as Latitude90handle run-of-network insertion orders in such a way as to optimize results for the buyer consistent with higher priority ad commitments. Run-of-site A run-of-site ad is one that is placed to rotate on all non-featured ad spaces on a site. CPM rates for run-of-site ads are usually less than for rates for specially-placed ads or sponsorships. Spam Originally posting an ad to multiple newsgroups, now used to describe unsolicited email advertising. Named after a skit by Monty Python, spam is one marketing and advertising technique to avoid at all costs
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Unique visitor A unique visitor is someone with a unique address who is entering a Web site for the first time that day (or some other specified period). Thus, a visitor that returns within the same day is not counted twice. A unique visitors count tells you how many different people there are in your audience during the time period, but not how much they used the site during the period. View A view is, depending on what?s meant, either an ad view or a page view. Usually an ad view is what?s meant. There can be multiple ad views per page views. View counting should consider that a small percentage of users choose to turn the graphics off (not display the images) in their browser. Visit A visit is a Web user with a unique address entering a Web site at some page for the first time that day (or for the first time in a lesser time period). The number of visits is roughly equivalent to the number of different people that visit a site. This term is ambiguous unless the user defines it, since it could mean a user session or it could mean a unique visitor that day.
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1.2 PURPOSE & SCOPE OF STUDY
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Purpose & Scope of study
Social networking has been used by most of the people in and around the nations. It has reached even to basic sectors. Despite the enormous growth of social networks in these years, the advertisements sectors have never faced major success due to several reasons. Thus, a useful growth turning into an effectual way for those sectors. To make it effective, we have to put-forth a positive trait in this fast moving world by proposing some new methodologies and inducing some modifications to the existing system. I) To determine the impacts of advertisements on social networking sites. II) To determine the criteria for successful advertising in social networking medium
I) To Determine The Impacts Of Advertisements On Social Networking Sites. In the past few decades most people said that social networks were a waste of time and resources. But in the past five years, the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Orkut and LinkedIn has created more popularity among users with no end in sight. Due to this apparent stability, many people are now wondering about the benefits of social media networking. Nowadays Social networking sites created a new trend of approach to make the business even to reach the end user, no doubt that the bigger social networking sites out there are making huge profits, and so are the companies that advertise through them. Some might argue that these websites are making money off of their users, and that they?re just using their members. Still, most people who belong to social networking sites don?t think they?re being taken advantage of.
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1.3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
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Research Methodology
Research methods are used to provide a systematic approach to research and helps in ordering the data collected in order to be to analyze it and conclude whether it answered a particular question or not. There are basically, two types of researches, Primary research and secondary research. We have used both the researches in our study. Our primary research supports the knowledge and curiosity behind our secondary research. There are generally two types of research methods, quantitative and qualitative. These methods can be used together or separately, one should choose the method most appropriate to the purpose of the thesis. The two approaches mainly differ in how to collect and analyze data. Quantitative method is focusing on statistical instruments and how to prove relations between different variables Further more, it is characterized by a large sample which is examined via forms, statistical methods and analysis of the data. An advantage of quantitative research is the high degree of objectivity and due to the large scope of observations it is possible to make generalizations. Qualitative method on the other hand, means research that generates descriptive data. It is said that the qualitative method reflects upon something and that the data collection in this method is focusing on so called "soft" data. The purpose of the thesis is to get industry opinions and analyze them, Thus Quantitative method was used.
The research with consumers was extremely important for this study. The relevance of audience criteria to media comparisons hinges on the assumption that media effectiveness is a function of the extent to which audiences possess characteristics predictive of the future purchase of advertised items. Which further has various aspects to it like likeliness towards a particular medium of entertainment, what builds more trust inside a consumer, or what is most action focused etc. Thus a research was carried out to study the behavioral aspects of consumers in context of their responses to various medium of advertising.
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Method of Research
A) Primary Research: Primary research was carried out using various research tools. Primary research carried various interviews, and questionnaires. It was basically taken from two perspectives, One was the company perspective and the other was the consumer perspective. B) Secondary Research: Secondary research was needed in the study, so as to understand all the previous researches, studies, and derivation in the above field of media comparisons for advertising. In our secondary research, we studied various research papers of multiple authors and publications to get the larger picture of the situation. Our secondary research is cited in various places in the research paper. The basic purpose of the secondary research is to back up the actions behind the primary research with the knowledge. The method used for the research was Questionnaires. For the purpose of said research, three different questionnaires were designed having different objectives each. The questions used in the questionnaire were ? Demographic Questions ? Multiple choice questions with one answer ? Multiple choice question with multiple answeres ? Rating scales ? Open ended, single textbox questions Methods of data collection The survey method helped to identify the reach of the brand among its target audience, ways of impact, usage of these social networking sites and access to these form of communication. And the content analysis is another method used to analyze the communication strategy of different social networking sites with certain parameters among top three Indian social networking sites which are tabulated with results.
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Research design This research study adopted survey and content analysis in order to find the effectiveness and the impact of communication in branding any product or the service among the target market through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitte, Orkut, linkedIn and other Online Resources.
Survey Survey was conducted randomly among Face book, Twitter, Orkut, and various online resources like mail ID, Forum and user community, by sending questionnaire through online to collect the individual opinion from the respondents.
Sampling Non probability sampling technique is used to collect the opinion
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2. DATA COLLECTION & ANALYSIS 2.1 DATA COLLECTION 2.2 DATA ANALYSIS
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Data and Data Analysis
DATA COLLECTION ,SOURCES OF DATA COLLECTION PRIMARY DATA Primary data are those data which is collected by researcher by self and In primary data collection, you collect the data yourself using methods such as interviews and questionnaires. The key point here is that the data you collect is unique to you and your research and, until you publish, no one else has access to it. There are many methods of collecting primary data and the main methods include: Questionnaires, interviews, focus group interviews, observation, case-studies, diaries, critical incidents portfolios.
Here in this research the Questionnaire / Interview method is used for data collection.
Researcher go personally to take oral interview and collect the data according to their feedback.
SECONDARY DATA
Secondary data are those, which have already been collected by someone else and have already been passed through the statistical process.
According to Dessel-"Data collected by other persons".
All the data has been collected from internal sources that includes: ? Magazines ? Books ? Websites ? Reports ? Files ? Available projects and Thesis.
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Data Analysis
Sample size : 100
1. Ratio of male - female on social networking sites. Gender Respondents Male 57 Female 43
Gender Ratio on social Networking sites
Male Female
43% 57%
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2. Age group of social network site users Age Group
Below 18 18-24 24-36 36+
Respondents 132138 28
Ratio of Age Group
Below 18 18-24 24-36 36+
28% %
13% 21
38%
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3.
Educational qualification of SNS User's Respondents 8 195419
Educational qualification 10th 12th Graduation Post Graduation
Education qualification of SNS User's
10th 12th Graduation Post Graduation
19 %
%
8 19%
54%
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4. SNS Users By Occupation Occupation Students Employed Self Employed Business Man Respondents 4834 8 10
SNS users by occupation
Students Employed Self Employed Business Man
%
8
10%
48%
34%
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5. How often do you use internet ?
Once a week 2-3 days a week 1-2 hrs a day More Than 3 hrs a day Respondents 121930 39
Uses of Internet
Once a week 2-3 days a week 1-2 hrs a day More Than 3 hrs a day
12% 39% 19%
30%
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5. From where you access Internet ?
Place Home Office Cyber Café Others
Respondents 4226 1220
Place where Internet acces from
Home Office Cyber Café Others
20% 42% 12%
26%
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7 . Are you aware of social networking site ? Yes No 98 2
Awareness about SNS
Yes 2 No
%
98%
57
8. How often do you "Log In" those Social Networking Sites ? Frequency Once a week Daily 2-3 Times More than 3 Times Respondents 2 1842 38
Frequency of Log In
Once a week Daily 2-3 Times 2 More than 3 Times
%
18% 38%
42%
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9. How many social networking site's profile do you have ?
No. of SNS One Two Three Four More than Four
Respondents 28 6216 12
No. of SNS Profile
One Two Three 2 8% Four More Than Four
% 12% 16%
62%
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10. Do you check online ads while surfing SNS ?
Yes No
68 32
% of Users who check Online ads
Yes No
32%
68%
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11. In which SNS do you find ads communicated well ?
Social Networking Sites Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Others
Respondents 35 6 32 12 15
Ads Communicated well In SNS
Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Others
15% 35% 12%
% 32%
6
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12. What kinds of ads have you come across in these sites ?
Types of Ads Web Banner Pop up Flash Video Others
Respondents 32 6 34 22 6
Types of Ads
Web Banner Pop up Flash Video Others
22%
%
6 % 32
% 34%
6
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13. Do you like ads appearing in SNS ?
Yes No Neutral
42 14 44
Perception about ads
Yes No Neutral
44%
42%
14%
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14. How frequently you click on these ads coming on your way ?
Response
Often Sometimes Never Depending on ads
Respondents 38 33 4 25
Frequency of clicking ads
Often Sometimes Never Depending on ads
25%
38%
4 %
33%
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15. Which sites consists more ads ?
Social Networking Sites Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Others
Respondents 45 3 32 12 8
Sites Consists more ads
Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Others
% 12%
8
45%
32% % 3
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16 . Do you agree with Impact of communication of these ads ?
Response Agree Disagree Neutral
Respondents 68 22 10
Impact of Ads
Agree Disagree Neutral
10% 22%
%
68
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Findings/Conclusions and Recommendations 3.1 Conclusion 3.2 Constraints & Limitations 3.3 Recommendations
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Conclusion
Communication about the product or service provides a major contribution to brand competition in the market. It not only provides information about a product or service but also promotes creative innovation. Besides advertising, it also facilitates consumer satisfaction. The hidden fact is that no brand can progress without effective communication strategy to attract their customers or users. Big and small variety of brands nowadays laid their base on social network communication to get recognized in the target market. Social networking sites users of Face book, Twitter, Orkut, Linked, Google Plus and Others have become a personal, product and corporate branding hub in India nowadays in digital era. Every brand that exists on social networking sites has the same core features and benefits, such as the ability to create a page, share resources, add multimedia and much more. Social networking sites are filled with potential users who are mainly young adults. They spend more time in these networking sites due to heavy commercial contents, entertainment and social gathering. So, product or service communicators throng their ads in these areas with more and more interactive and with fascinating factors so that their brand identity is developed among the right choice of focused audience. Advertisers and brands uses social networking sites as the major resource for their promotion and developing brand identity among the focused market.
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Limitations and Constraints
1. Budgetary constraints - gathering and processing data can be very expensive. 2. Time constraints - Since it is not a big limitation but generally people refuse these type of online survey. 3. Reliability of the data - the value of any research findings depend critically on the accuracy of the data collected. Data quality can be compromised via a number of potential routes, e.g., leading questions, unrepresentative samples, biased interviewers etc. 4. The data is gathered is not any geographic located so it is generalized data for whole world, But it can change according to the Geographical location.
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SUGGESTIONS Communication should be more preferred than advertising. People do not prefer buying products through social networking sites. So, if the brand is communicated well and remembered by the audience, then it is a greatest success to the company for their promotion through social media. Promotional way of advertising is best: the usual banner ads and pop-up ads make the users to ignore them. So advertising must be interactive, promotional and in innovative form to hold the audience. It should target the individuals than the mass. If an ad is hosted for a group then that would be no advantage in delivering specified information. Adding more multimedia elements.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.academicjournals.org/jmcs Impacts of advertisements in social networking sites By- O.S.Karthick babu, D.Senthil kumar https://twitter.com/about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter http://in.linkedin.com/about-us http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkedin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut http://www.linkedin.com/company/linkedin http://www.google.com/images
http://www.optimus01.co.za/why-is-online-marketing-so-effective/ http://www.ehow.com/facts_5036191_effectiveness-internet-advertising.html http://www.clicksor.com/publishers/adformat
http://www.affiliateseeking.com/forums/general-marketing/917-forms-of-online-advertising.html
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Annexure
Questionaire For Online Survey
This Is an Online survey for measuring of effectiveness of advertisement through Social Networking Site. Note : Result will be Used only for Academics purpose, It can't be used for any type of commercialization.
1. Sex Male Female 2. Age Group Below 18 18-24 24-36 36+ 3. Educational qualification 10th 12th Graduation Post Graduation 4. Occupation Student Employed Self Employed Businessman 5. How often do you use internet ? Once a week 2-3 days a week 1-2 hrs a day More Than 3 hrs a day
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6. From where you access Internet ? Home Office Cyber Cafe Other: 7. Are you aware of social networking site ? Yes No 8. How often do you "Log In" those Social Networking Sites ? Once a week Daily 2-3 times a day More Than 3 Times a day Other: 9. How many social networking site's profile do you have ? One Two Three Four More Than Four 10. Do you check online ads while surfing SNS ? Yes No 11. In which SNS do you find ads communicated well ? Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Other:
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12. What kinds of ads have you come across in these sites ? Web Banner Pop Ups Flash Video Other: 13. Do you like ads appearing in SNS ? Yes No Neutral 14. How frequently you click on these ads coming on your way ? Often Sometine Never Depending on Ads 15. Which sites consists more ads ? Facebook Twitter Orkut LinkedIn Other: 16. Do you agree with Impact of communication of these ads ? Agree Disagree Neutral
Submit
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doc_390978614.doc