Introduction: E-cigarettes are marketed on brand-sponsored Facebook profile pages despite Facebook's policy to prohibit e-cigarette marketing on their platform. We aimed to identify e-cigarette marketing strategies used and products marketed on brand-sponsored Facebook profiles and assess whether these strategies and featured products differ by user engagement.
Methods: We examined up to 10 recent Facebook posts on 26 e-cigarette brand-sponsored profile pages uploaded between August 1 and November 31, 2016. We identified positive engagement (i.e. "like," "love"), negative engagement (i.e. "sad," "angry"), post type (e.g. link, photo), type of sales promotion (e.g. giveaways, discounts), non-sales promotion (e.g. event promotion without product marketing), and marketed products (e.g. e-cigarettes, e-liquids).
Results: We examined 225 Facebook posts. Engagement was modest (e.g. Median "likes" = 8 [Min = 0, Max = 591]). The most common post types were photos (52.6%) and links (35.5%). Of all links, 83.7% were links to online shops. Of all posts, 35.0% had overt sales promotional content, 32.0% featured non-sales promotional content, and 68.0% featured an e-cigarette product. The most commonly featured product was an e-cigarette device (50.6%). Posts with more positive engagement included giveaways (versus sales [p = 0.009]) and posts marketing vaping devices (versus e-liquids [p = 0.004)]). Negative engagement was not associated with marketing strategies or products. Of the brand-sponsored profile pages, 42.3% could be accessed by underage users.
Discussion: E-cigarettes are marketed on Facebook using a variety of promotional strategies. Importantly, underage youth often can access this marketing content. Comprehensive tobacco control policies that restrict e-cigarette marketing on social media are needed urgently.
Keywords: e-cigarette; marketing; social media.