The CCTS Recruitment and Retention Office offers social media advertising consultations to researchers and investigators who are interested in advertising their studies to attract more participants.

Study Recruitment- Using Digital Tools to Increase Participation

Background of Social Media Advertising

Targeted social media ads allows researchers to utilize the Facebook Ad System. Facebook Ads will be hosted on the CCTS Facebook Ad Account once they have been IRB approved. As part of the ad, researchers will choose a target audience, a total budget and the duration of time the ad will run.

Building a target audience is done by determining specific characteristics of the audience you want to target with the ads (the characteristics of the potential participants). Facebook will then attempt to display that post on the Facebook and Instagram newsfeeds of those that fit the demographics selected (such as age, location, interests, behaviors, etc).

How social media advertising consultations work:

1. The research team submits a social media consult intake form here: go.osu.edu/fbrequest

2. The CCTS Recruitment and Retention Office will take the information from the intake form and create a social media consult presentation, where the team will explain how social media advertising can be used to assist the research team. During the presentation the research team will provide edits, updates and changes to the presentation and the ads/targeting that have been put together.

3. Following the presentation, the Recruitment and Retention Office will adapt the presentation based on the changes given by the research team and send the presentation back to the research team.

4. Once a budget is approved for the social media ads, the research team will submit an erequest for the amount of money used for the ads. The CCTS Recruitment and Retention Office will assist the research team through this process.

5. Once the presentation is approved, the Recruitment and Retention team will make the social media ads and put them into a submission form for the IRB. The research team will submit the form to the IRB.

6. Once the ads are approved by the IRB, the Recruitment and Retention team will create the ads and publish them. The Recruitment and Retention team will monitor the ads to make sure they are doing well, and once the ads are finished the Recruitment and Retention team will send the research team a recap of the ad's performance.