Marketers: We Don't Understand Social Nets, But We're Going There Anyway
Buried in a dull writeup of a boring survey is a nugget that must cheer both Chris DeWolfe and Mark Zuckerberg: Internet marketers polled by Sapient wish they had a better sense of how their campaigns worked on the likes of MySpace and Facebook. But it's not going to stop them from spending money there this year.
Social marketing was cited as the least "trackable" digital channel, but it was also the channel that has the largest anticipated increase in marketing analytics spend for 2008, according to the survey.The bad news: MySpace is ancient by Internet standards, and Facebook is at least approaching adolescence. And given that they're both ad-supported Web businesses, they really shouldn't be black boxes for their clients at this point. The good news: If they can figure it out how to prove their value, they've got a willing audience.
So, marketers, if you can't actually track your ads with statistics, spend a little time to monitor what people say about them.
The flip side is that I predict it gives their sales team heartburn over achieving their revenue targets without diluting RPMs. When you know (instead of suspect) how poorly a lot of that inventory performs, the checkbook doesn't snap open as quickly.