The Attitudes of the Czech and Slovak Internet Users Towards Social Network Advertising

Abstract

During the last few years, the use of social networks has increased dramatically. The developers constantly work on widening options available for social network users. As a result, many opportunities have emerged for marketers, who now massively use social networks for the advertising. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the attitudes of users towards the advertising they face on these social networks; in particular on the most visited one, Facebook. The study aims to understand Facebook usage and attitudes of the users in general, and then more specifically the perceived importance of the informative and entertaining value of the advertisements. This paper also examines the impact of its invasiveness when considering the amount of published advertisements. The population chosen for this study consisted of Czech and Slovak university students who were asked to respond to an online questionnaire distributed directly through Facebook. Afterwards the results were analysed and it was found that the students were not very keen on Facebook advertisements and perceived the quantity of such advertising negatively. The findings also indicated the preference of the informative value of the advertisements rather than the entertaining value. Furthermore, a slightly more positive perception was found for both informativeness and entertainment among females when compared with males. However, because of a small sample when considering the whole sphere of the users, caution must be applied to the presentation of the findings.