The provided source material offers insights into two distinct aspects of Facebook engagement: consumer-oriented freebies and health research recruitment. One source details a promotional campaign by Zynga for its game "The Ville," which offered virtual items to users who liked the game's fan page. The other sources focus on a study assessing the feasibility and representativeness of using Facebook advertising to recruit adults aged 35 to 74 years for a health research survey in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL), Canada. The study evaluated costs, recruitment time, and the ability to target specific demographics, finding that Facebook was an economical and efficient tool for reaching a representative sample, including older adults. In contrast, the consumer freebie required a simple social media interaction to acquire in-game assets.
Consumer Engagement: Virtual Freebies on Facebook
The source material describes a specific instance of digital freebie distribution via the social media platform Facebook. This section details the offer, the requirements for participation, and the nature of the rewards provided by the gaming company Zynga.
The Ville Fan Page Promotion
Zynga, a developer of social network games, released a game titled "The Ville" on Facebook. To promote the game, the company offered players an opportunity to receive three free in-game items. This offer was exclusively available through the game's official fan page on the platform. The promotion required users to perform a specific action to claim the rewards.
Requirements and Redemption Process
To access the free items, users were required to "like" The Ville's fan page. This action served as the primary gatekeeping mechanism for the offer. Once the user liked the page, they gained access to a "Freebies" tab where the items could be claimed. The source notes that while liking the page was mandatory to receive the items, users could choose to "unlike" the page immediately after claiming the freebies if they wished. There was no indication of a purchase requirement or any other financial commitment to receive these virtual goods.
The Freebies Offered
Upon liking the fan page and navigating to the Freebies tab, users were eligible to claim three specific virtual items for use within The Ville game: - A Lot Expansion Permit, allowing players to increase the size of their virtual property. - Five free energy points, a resource used to perform actions within the game. - A Tesseract Mirror Cluster wall decoration, a cosmetic item to customize the player's virtual home.
The source material indicates that while these items were guaranteed at the time of the promotion, there was no guarantee that Zynga would offer additional freebies through the fan page in the future. The offer was presented as a time-sensitive opportunity for players to acquire in-game assets at no cost.
Health Research Recruitment via Facebook Advertising
The provided research material evaluates the use of Facebook advertising as a method for recruiting participants for a health survey in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL), Canada. The study focused on adults aged 35 to 74 years, a demographic often underrepresented in social media recruitment studies. The following sections detail the background, methodology, and results of this investigation.
Background and Rationale for Facebook Recruitment
Traditional recruitment methods for health research, such as telephone surveys, face significant challenges. The source notes that only 72% of Canadian households possess landlines, which limits the ability of telephone-based recruitment to achieve representative samples. In contrast, internet usage and Facebook adoption are high in Canada, particularly in the Atlantic provinces, which include NL. Among internet users in this region aged 18 and older, 94% use Facebook, with 73% using it daily. Even among the age group with the lowest usage (55 years and older), 78% of internet users report using Facebook, and 52% use it daily.
NL presents a unique case for studying recruitment methods due to its broad geographic spread and unique health challenges, which make traditional sampling methods difficult. The study proposed that Facebook advertising could overcome many of the limitations of traditional recruitment by leveraging the platform's vast user base and sophisticated targeting capabilities. The platform allows advertisers to target users based on demographics, location, interests, and behaviors, offering a potential solution for reaching hard-to-access populations.
Study Objective and Design
The primary objective of the study was to assess whether Facebook advertising could serve as a feasible (timely, economical, and requiring minimal human resources) method for recruiting a representative sample of adults aged 35 to 74 years for a health research survey in NL. The secondary objective was to clarify whether older populations could be effectively reached through this medium.
The study was conducted during April and May 2018. It involved a Web-based survey on cancer awareness and prevention. To ensure the sample was representative of the underlying population, the researchers employed a dynamic recruitment strategy. They launched an initial set of advertisements and then analyzed the sociodemographic characteristics of the early respondents. If specific groups were found to be underrepresented, additional advertisements were created and targeted specifically at those demographics to improve the sample's balance.
Targeting Strategies
The researchers utilized several targeting strategies to reach specific population segments:
- Geographic Targeting: To recruit rural residents, the team used Canada Post’s classification system, which identifies rural areas by a "0" in the second character of a postal code. Facebook's targeting allows for geographic segmentation by forward sortation area (the first three characters of the postal code). The advertisement was targeted to all forward sortation areas in NL containing a "0".
- Age Targeting: To reach a younger segment of the target population (35 to 44 years), a specific "age ad" was created and shown exclusively to individuals in that age bracket.
- Gender Targeting: To increase the representation of men, a "gender ad" was created that was shown only to male users.
- Education Targeting: To target individuals with lower educational attainment, the researchers used an exclusion strategy. They created an "education ad" that excluded individuals with higher levels of education, ensuring it was only shown to people who had graduated high school, completed some high school, or had not specified their level of education on Facebook. This approach was chosen because educational attainment is an optional self-reported field on the platform and may be less accurately reported.
Assessment of Representativeness and Feasibility
The study assessed the representativeness of the recruited sample by comparing its sociodemographic and health characteristics with the underlying population of NL. The researchers used Cramer V to measure the magnitude of the difference between the sample and population distributions. A difference was considered statistically insignificant or small (V≤0.10) if the sample was deemed representative, and practically representative if the difference was between 0.10 and 0.20.
Feasibility was assessed based on three key factors: cost, ease of use, and recruitment time. The study found that the method was highly manageable, requiring only 4.3 hours of work per week from a single graduate student. It proved effective for rapid recruitment, successfully enrolling 1,048 participants in just 40 days. A significant advantage noted was the ease of using targeted advertisements to improve sample representativeness and recruit hard-to-reach populations.
Financial and Performance Metrics
The study provided detailed financial and performance data for the recruitment campaign. The total ad spend was Can $1,750, with an additional Can $539 in administrative costs, bringing the total cost of recruitment to Can $2,289. The cost per recruit was calculated at Can $2.18, with the ad spend per recruit being Can $1.67.
The campaign generated a total paid reach of 34,012 unique users. Engagement metrics showed 2,067 unique link clicks and 2,316 overall link clicks. Of the users who clicked the link, a completion rate of 50.7% was achieved, resulting in 1,048 recruits. The targeting strategies showed varying levels of efficiency. The general campaign (targeted to women) had the lowest cost per recruit at Can $1.36 and the highest number of recruits (799). The targeted ads for men and lower education levels had higher costs per recruit (Can $3.63 and Can $2.52, respectively) and recruited fewer individuals. The ad targeting older adults (35-44) yielded very few recruits (7), suggesting this demographic was either difficult to reach or less responsive to the specific advertisement used.
Conclusion
The provided source material highlights two different applications of Facebook. For consumers, it served as a direct channel for Zynga to distribute virtual freebies to players of "The Ville," requiring only a "like" of the fan page to claim in-game items. For researchers, Facebook advertising presented a viable, economical, and efficient method for recruiting a large and representative sample of adults, including older populations, for a health survey in a challenging geographic region. The study demonstrated that with strategic targeting, it is possible to overcome the limitations of traditional recruitment methods and achieve a sample that is demographically comparable to the target population.