Advertising on the social Media: an Analysis of the Youth’s Responses to Facebook Advertising in the City of Nairobi.

Abstract

This research aims to find out the attitudes and perceptions that youth in Nairobi have towards advertising on the social networking sites. Facebook was chosen due to the large number of followers in Kenya, especially among the youth based on the findings of a research done by Kenya ICT Board in 2009 to establish the popularity of social media in Kenya. The study found Facebook to be the most popular social media accessed by 96% of respondent. Using questionnaire as the instrument of mining data, the respondents were sampled from the youth in three demographic groups namely: Students, Employed and Self-Employed within the city of Nairobi. Their responses were then analyzed statistically with the aim of finding out first; the extent of the use of Facebook, secondly; their general attitudes and perceptions towards advertising on the social media in general and Facebook in particular and thirdly; an inferential comparison on the responses among the three demographic groups was done to find out how they differ. Finally the findings of the survey were discussed and recommendation were stated. Key Words: Internet, Social Media, Advertising, Facebook, Youth, Attitudes, Perceptions, Demographic Group, Social Networking Sites, Students, Employed, Self-Employed, Nairobi