Going native on Facebook: A content analysis of sponsored messages on undergraduate student Facebook pages

Abstract

This paper examines the prevalence and nature of sponsored messages on Facebook. Results of a content analysis of desktop and mobile Facebook pages from 52 undergraduate student subjects showed 53% of sponsored messages in the desktop sample and 100% of sponsored messages in the mobile sample would be categorised as native advertising, as they were located in the user's news feed. Approximately 12% of all news feed posts were sponsored posts and almost 90% of sponsored news feed posts were based on the user's or user's friends' actions. The majority of the sponsoring advertisers were from companies established after the year 2000, and only 11% were leading US advertisers.