Short video ads on Instagram, aimed at people who follow no news outlets, made those viewers more likely to hold accurate beliefs. That is the finding of a study published June 29 in PLoS One by Wertz, Babinska, Batorski and colleagues.
The team ran 48 field quasi-experiments. Each one showed brief videos carrying simple, verified information to news non-users in various U.S. states. Topics were climate change (28 experiments), election integrity (11), COVID-19 vaccines (5) and media literacy (4).
The scale was large. The videos had 4,188,616 impressions and reached 2,496,878 Instagram accounts. Of those, 690,470 users watched at least half of a video, and 40,584 completed a follow-up poll.
What the numbers showed
In 46 of the 48 experiments the effect was positive, and 40 reached statistical significance. On average, people who saw an ad were 2.80 times more likely than the control group to answer the poll in line with its message.
Results held across topics. Viewers of climate ads were 2.46 times more likely to hold accurate beliefs on the issue. Those who watched videos debunking the claim of fraud in the 2020 election were 4.62 times more likely to agree that the elections were secure. The ads did not backfire, even on contentious subjects.
The effect also lasted. Delayed tests on climate change, run as late as 229 days after exposure, still found significant results. The ads also moved attitudes, and the authors report mixed results for behavioral intentions, with some effect on vaccination.
Why target non-readers
The researchers argue that the bigger problem may be less that people consume bad content and more that many consume no reliable public affairs information at all. They cite figures that news makes up only 1.4% of Facebook’s News Feed and under 0.5% on TikTok. Around 47% of citizens internationally do not consume news, and 39% say they sometimes or often avoid it.
To build the comparison groups, the team used Instagram’s Ad Manager and assigned users to treatment or control by profile birth month, with about 20,000 people in each group. The authors note that the work was a partnership between academics and a non-profit that ran the ads.
The research was supported by the European Research Council and the Center for Excellence in Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw.
Sources
- Ad-based social media interventions increase belief accuracy and generate pro-social opinions among non-news readers
- Ad-based social media interventions increase belief accuracy and generate pro-social opinions among non-news readers
