Open AccessUsing Facebook for Large-Scale Online Randomized Clinical Trial Recruitment: Effective Advertising Strategies
Author(s) -
Laura Akers,
Judith S. Gordon
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
jmir. journal of medical internet research/journal of medical internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.446
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1439-4456
pISSN - 1438-8871
DOI - 10.2196/jmir.9372
Subject(s) - online advertising , advertising , tracking (education) , scale (ratio) , cyberpsychology , targeted advertising , randomized controlled trial , matching (statistics) , advertising campaign , smokeless tobacco , social media , internet privacy , psychology , the internet , world wide web , computer science , medicine , business , population , pedagogy , physics , surgery , pathology , quantum mechanics , environmental health , tobacco use
Targeted Facebook advertising can be an effective strategy to recruit participants for a large-scale online study. Facebook advertising is useful for reaching people in a wide geographic area, matching a specific demographic profile. It can also target people who would be unlikely to search for the information and would thus not be accessible via Google AdWords. It is especially useful when it is desirable not to raise awareness of the study in a demographic group that would be ineligible for the study. This paper describes the use of Facebook advertising to recruit and enroll 1145 women over a 15-month period for a randomized clinical trial to teach support skills to female partners of male smokeless tobacco users. This tutorial shares our study team’s experiences, lessons learned, and recommendations to help researchers design Facebook advertising campaigns. Topics covered include designing the study infrastructure to optimize recruitment and enrollment tracking, creating a Facebook presence via a fan page , designing ads that attract potential participants while meeting Facebook’s strict requirements, and planning and managing an advertising campaign that accommodates the rapid rate of diminishing returns for each ad.