Social media advertisements have offered customers plenty of opportunities to adapt to various facets of life. At the same time, prospective students use a range of knowledge sources to go through search of private higher educational institutes in their decision-making and selection process. In fact, it was evident that traditional sources of information, such as print and broadcast media, higher educational fairs and websites of private higher educational institutes were thoroughly influential until the emergence of social media. The prevalence and perseverance of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, as many students interact, network and participate in these online communities, now provides an alternate source of knowledge in their selection of private higher educational institutes. This research seeks to investigate the influence of social media advertising on selection of private higher educational institutes and explains why customers are more impacted by social media advertisements, and why consumers are tempted to select a private higher educational institutes based on social media advertising. The method of data collection was conducted via an online survey questionnaire. Of the sample population of sixty-five (65) students and employees of American International Campus, Colombo, Sri Lanka, fifty (50) of them replied to the online survey questionnaire and expressed their views. The results show active involvement of the respondents in social media and the role of social media advertisements in influencing their decisions on the selection of private higher education institutions and meeting their knowledge needs. Overall, because of the influence of the use of social media advertisements, this study contributes to the awareness of the selection of higher educational institutions among the survey respondents. The importance of this study also offers feedback for managers of private higher education institutions to devise plans for active involvement in social media.
