Recruiting Young Gay and Bisexual Men for a Human Papillomavirus Vaccination Intervention Through Social Media: The Effects of Advertisement Content

Abstract

BackgroundWeb-based approaches, specifically social media sites, represent a promising approach for recruiting young gay and bisexual men for research studies. Little is known, however, about how the performance of social media advertisements (ads) used to recruit this population is affected by ad content (ie, image and text).ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of different images and text included in social media ads used to recruit young gay and bisexual men for the pilot test of a Web-based human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination intervention.MethodsIn July and September 2016, we used paid Facebook advertisements to recruit men who were aged 18-25 years, self-identified as gay or bisexual, US resident, and had not received HPV vaccine. A 4x2x2 factorial experiment varied ad image (a single young adult male, a young adult male couple, a group of young adult men, or a young adult male talking to a doctor), content focus (text mentioning HPV or HPV vaccine), and disease framing (text mentioning cancer or a sexually transmitted disease [STD]). Poisson regression determined whether these experimental factors affected ad performance.ResultsThe recruitment campaign reached a total of 35,646 users who viewed ads for 36,395 times. This resulted in an overall unique click-through rate of 2.01% (717/35,646) and an overall conversion rate of 0.66% (241/36,395). Reach was higher for ads that included an image of a couple (incidence rate ratio, IRR=4.91, 95% CI 2.68-8.97, P<.001) or a group (IRR=2.65, 95% CI 1.08-6.50, P=.03) compared with those that included an image of a single person. Ads that included an image of a couple also had a higher conversion rate (IRR=2.56, 95% CI 1.13-5.77, P=.02) than ads that included an image of a single person. Ads with text mentioning an STD had a higher unique click-through rate compared with ads with text mentioning cancer (IRR=1.34, 95% CI 1.06-1.69, P=.01). The campaign cost a total of US $413.72 and resulted in 150 eligible and enrolled individuals (US $2.76 per enrolled participant).ConclusionsFacebook ads are a convenient and cost-efficient strategy for reaching and recruiting young gay and bisexual men for a Web-based HPV vaccination intervention. To help optimize ad performance among this population, researchers should consider the importance of the text and image included in the social media recruitment ads.

Participant Recruitment and Retention in Remote eHealth Intervention Trials: Methods and Lessons Learned From a Large Randomized Controlled Trial of Two Web-Based Smoking Interventions

“…These findings also suggest that, even without unique targeting parameters, Facebook may effectively reach some hard-to-reach populations, such as the 19% of the US population living in rural areas [ 53 ]. Although not done for this study, research suggests that further targeting and adjusting Facebook ad campaigns may increase the likelihood of reaching the desired population [ 49 , 54 ]. For example, different targeting parameters, advertisement images, and wording may be used strategically to recruit highly-specific subsets of participants [ 27 ].…”

“…Most participants in this trial were women. Although some studies have successfully recruited samples comprised entirely of males for eHealth research through targeted advertisement campaigns [ 27 , 49 , 54 ], it is quite common among eHealth intervention trials to have a greater proportion of women compared to men [ 3 , 9 , 24 , 25 , 30 , 55 - 58 ]. This is not surprising as women are more likely to utilize eHealth programs [ 59 ].…”

A systematic literature review to examine the potential for social media to impact HPV vaccine uptake and awareness, knowledge, and attitudes about HPV and HPV vaccination

“…These studies also did not typically include any mention of HPV in their recruitment language. Some of these recruitment studies however did arguably provide some evidence that social media may serve as a potential channel to reach certain relevant, potentially harder-to-reach populations, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered individuals [21][22][23] After aggregating and organizing the articles by method and social media platform, we then analyzed the key takeaways and relevant data points from each of the studies, as relevant to addressing our objective of examining the potential relationship between social media content and use and its potential impact on HPV and HPV vaccine awareness, knowledge, and attitudes and HPV vaccine uptake. We then determined the most relevant key themes for the development of implications for health care professionals and communicators by comparing and contrasting the relevant findings and implications from each study.…”

Using Facebook to Recruit Young Australian Men Into a Cross-Sectional Human Papillomavirus Study

“…This highlights the need for additional targeted advertising to achieve a sample that is broadly demographically representative of the general population. A benefit of using Facebook is the ability to readily modify how one targets specific cohorts for recruitment by adjusting the wording, images, and placement of the advertising, as has been shown in previous studies [ 26 , 49 ].…”