Do More Likes Lead to More Clicks? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Social Advertising

One advantage of advertising on social media is the ability to leverage users’ likes to influence the perceptions and responses of others in their network. Through a large-scale field experiment on WeChat, three online lab studies, and a theoretical model, the authors explore whether and how displaying more likes in an ad can effectively lead to more ad likes and clicks. They find that displaying the first like can significantly increase users’ tendencies to both like and click on an ad. However, on average, showing additional likes does not further increase the clicking propensity, although it consistently attracts more likes. The authors further find that displaying more likes increases the click-through rate for lesser-known brands but not for well-known brands, and it has a stronger impact on the like rate for more socially engaged users than for less socially engaged ones. These findings are consistent with the interplay between informational and normative social influences in social advertising. The public visibility of likes makes liking more susceptible to normative social influence than clicking. The coexistence of these two forces can lead to an enhanced conformity effect on liking and a crowding-out effect on clicking. The findings offer novel implications for managing social advertising and designing social media platforms.