Social Media and Advertising Symbiosis

How do we communicate and satisfy needs in a 'world of mouth'?

The most recent whirlwind review of Social Media by Erik Qualman gives enough stats to fill any presentation. Here's the video....



While the factoids are interesting, if not out right impressive, the link to marketing and the buying process is still somewhat illusory and tenuous.

While there are more people involved, that doesn't necessarily equate to easier reach thru a connected world.  The first degree of separation between friends, followers, and connections for any one individual isn't growing nearly as rapidly as the universe itself.  So, the question of scale always crops up: What is the most effective way to reach people?

The most common approach today to reach an audience on social media is still plain old advertising - the paid placement of a message - be it a box ad, a sponsored story or a promoted tweet. In fact when the revenue officers of the major platforms talk about monetization and value creation, they mean getting someone to pay for those eyeballs. The likely advantage that social sites have is that interests and interactions should help with both efficiency and effectiveness. Whether consumer engagement or interaction is required is a function of the business objective and payment model. 

Fishing where the fish are means that a large share of the impressions are on social media sites and/or include a social call to action, e.g. 'like', as various comScore reports indicate.  In Canada, 27% of the impressions go to social media platforms. 

Seems that we can't talk about one with out the other.... 

Here's a comparison of Facebook and Google display ads from back in the day when FB had 845 million users.

Original Source: WordStream, the experts in search marketing.