Recently, Rae from Sugarrae posted about the rise of Facebook as a targeted marketing medium. As a college student myself I know all to well about Facebook. As an incoming freshman Facebook was just beginning to catch on. I remember spending 2-3 hours a day browsing everything from who were in my classes to who the cute girl that lived down the hall was. Within the past year Facebook opened the flood gates. A medium of expression that was once exclusive to college students was opened to every high school across the United States. People were awestruck when this happened. I vividly remember standing near the free speech lawn as students proposed a boycott of Facebook. I though to myself are they serious?
Shortly after opening Facebook to high school students it was opened to the masses. Many users though it could be the MySpace killer, having never used MySpace because of the annoyances associated with it, I agreed with many of my fellow students.
Another major change of Facebook caught many college students by surprise was the change to the Facebook “Home” Page. I remember having a debate in my Digital Media class as to whether or not this new page was an invasion of privacy. Facebook had begun using RSS feeds to let fellow students know “up to the minute” what was going on in their friend lives. Once again students on the free speech lawn were proposing a facebook boycott. This time I joined in.
Since Facebook has beefed up their privacy settings I have become a regular user again, checking it 3-5 times a week. By no means am I a Facebook Addict. But Rae’s post made me ask myself what if I was?
Today while I was on campus and around the fraternity house I asked several of my friends whom I know are addicted to Facebook if they ever clicked or paid any attention to the ads on the side column of Facebook. After asking 25 total people this same question 23 people said they never pay any attention to them. To tell you the truth I was downright astonished.
I would love to get my hands on some real information regarding the click threw rates of Facebook Fliers.
This said I think I may do some testing with the valentines promotion and see how my results are. If college students are that apathetic about advertisements then maybe the advertisers that can afford to publish more than just “Fliers” are really just wasting their money.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I actually bought 50,000 impressions (you should be able to get them even cheaper if you only advertise to yuor own school) for flyers last night – running tracking, am gonna post results… I am interested to see yours too.
Rae,
These stats would be amazing. Markus and I just launched a 17,500 impression test run for Orlando. Once we get the results I will be sure to post them. Your correct its considerably cheaper to advertise them at your own school. It cost $5 for 10,000 impressions at UCF and $5 for 2,500 impressions at Rollins, FullSail and the local community college.
Yeah, I’m paying 5.00 per 2500 impressions – ran at fsu and uf… I launched mine this morning as it appears they only run for 24 hours (unless I’m wrong, thats the timeframe to have all your impressions done by… its 7:24 and I’m at 63% complete… so, I should be posting results tomorrow from my run. And I actually ran 25,000 impressions, not 50,000 – just checked my math.