Abstract
AbstractSocial media ad stories are widely used to grow engagement in wildlife conservation. Yet the benefits of different types of story character and content are unclear. In four video stories, we explored the impact of varying the type of protagonist species (Elephant and WildDog) and content about the role of humans in causing wildlife loss (Elephant + HumanAction and WildDog + HumanAction) using Facebook A/B split tests. Counter to prior perceptions that traditional charismatic flagships are more appealing, stories featuring wild dogs—with and without human‐caused harm—elicited higher traffic to a conservation organization's donation website. Only the Elephant video elicited one donation. These results show that storytelling in social media ads, by choosing character and content, can help raise engagement. Yet the failure to raise funds and limitations arising from Facebook's opaque algorithms, underscores the need for greater experimentation to build knowledge about how to convert engagement into donations.
Highlights
Conservation organizations increasingly use storytelling in social media advertisements to increase public engagement and donations to wildlife conservation (Toivonen et al, 2019; Waters & Jones, 2011)
Based on the past literature (e.g., Shreedhar & Mourato, 2019), we explore the following: first, stories featuring a traditional charismatic flagship elicits more social media engagement and donations (Elephant > Wild dog (WildDog)); second, stories stating that human actions led to the loss of wildlife increase engagement and donations (Elephant + HumanAction > Elephant and WildDog + HumanAction >WildDog) i.e., there is an outrage effect; and lastly, engagement and donations are similar between videos featuring a traditional charismatic flagship and another species when videos include human-caused harm to wildlife (Elephant + HumanAction = WildDog + HumanAction)
This article presents findings from an effort to evaluate the behavioral impact of storytelling in Facebook advertisements on social media engagement and online donations
Summary
Conservation organizations increasingly use storytelling in social media advertisements to increase public engagement and donations to wildlife conservation (Toivonen et al, 2019; Waters & Jones, 2011). An estimated 3 billion people actively use social media and Facebook is the largest platform in the world at 2.4 billion users (OrtizOspina, 2019). On these platforms, stories can be shared with target audiences through videos, photos, and articles, more rapidly and at a lower cost than traditional media. Effective stories can drive traffic to conservation websites, as users can actively engage with ad stories by clicking on web links, apart from liking and sharing them across friend networks. While informational messages emphasize facts and evidence (Katz, 2013), stories follow a particular narrative structure that describe cause-and-effect relationships between events that take place over time and that
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