EXPRESS: Do More “Likes” Lead to More Clicks? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Social Advertising

One advantage of advertising on social media is leveraging users’ expression of “likes” to influence the perceptions and responses of others in their network. Through a largescale field experiment on WeChat, three online lab studies and a theoretical model, we explore whether and how displaying more “likes” in an ad can effectively lead to more ad “likes” and clicks. We 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.” We further find that displaying more “likes” increases the clickthrough rate for lesser-known brands but not for well-known brands, and 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. Our findings offer novel implications for managing social advertising and designing social media platforms.