Friends, Fans, and Followers: Do Ads Work on Social Networks? How Gender and Age Shape Receptivity

Social-networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter are growing in both popularity and number of users. For advertisers and the sites themselves, it is crucial that users accept advertising as a component of the SNS. Anecdotal evidence indicates that social-networking advertising (SNA) can be effective when users accept it, but the perception of excessive commercialization may lead to user abandonment. Empirical support for these propositions, however, is lacking. Based on media uses and gratification theory, the authors propose and empirically test a model of content-related, structural, and socialization factors that affect users' attitudes toward SNA.