 advertisement. 2. To investigate and find out how social networking sites users view advertisements in term of informativeness, usefulness, entertainment value, reliability and product value. 3. To analyze and identify factors affecting the overall attitudes of social networking sites users towards advertisements. DEFINATIONS OF TERMS
Social networking sites users – refer to Taichung People who access at least one social networking site as following: Facebook – at first was launched to support Harvard alumni network only. This model is different from other sites that open their system without limitation. Facebook expanded rapidly and allows anyone to be a user. The most outstanding feature of Facebook is the ability to build application by outside developers. Hi5 – provides general social networking services such as a list of friends, sharing blogs, pictures and songs. It’s popular across the world especially in Asia.
Youtube – is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. Unregistered users can watch the videos, while registered users are allowed to upload and unlimited number of videos. It is the most popular social networking sites in term of video content. Twitter – is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read message on text-based posts of up to 140 characters. Social network advertisement – refers to direct and indirect advertising placed on social network sites. For direct advertisement, it can crate like ads on traditional websites or target users directly.
And, indirectly advertisement focuses on innovative marketing technique in which companies creates pages or groups and allow users to join. The various ads are used in a way that resembles on offline among the most popular types of ads are the following: banner ads, pop-ups windows, and video clips. Banner Ads – are the most popular ads on the web. There are two types of banners, Non-enhanced banners and Enhanced banner. With non-enhanced banners, when the users click on a banner, another screen will appear. With enhanced banners, all of the information appears on the banner and the user never leaves it.
Enhanced banners promote consumer involvement by allowing them to type information on some sites they can e-mail a friend. Pop-up Windows – The idea behind a pop-up is that it doesn’t get in the way of the content on the page. Double exposure pop-ups are another kind of pop-up that reappear after five seconds. It is easy for the users to close them. Video clips – are short clips of videos, they are usually parts of a longer piece. Video clips in digital format are often found on the internet. Most contents of video clip are news and sporting events, historical videos, music videos and film trailers. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The research focuses on social networks sites users in Taichung City. This study centers merely on factors that have been mentioned in previous similar studies which are informativeness, usefulness, entertainment value, reliability and product value. The social networking sites selected for this study are Facebook, Hi5, Youtube and Twitter as they attract more than 50% of all social networking site users nowadays. SINIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The result of this study will be useful for product and service owners who have ads or wish to place ads on social networking sites, and for advertisers who prepare ads on social networking sites.
ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY This study will be divided into five chapters. The first chapter includes eight parts: background, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, definitions of terms, scope of the study, significance of the study and a conceptual framwork. The second chapter covers a review of the literature and previous relevant studies while the third chapter covers the research methodology regarding the subjects of the study, materials or the instruments used in this study for data collection, the procedures to collect the information and data analysis.
The fourth chapter presents the results of the study and the last chapter co