Earlier this year, Procter & Gamble announced that it would invest less money in narrowly targeted Facebook ads, questioning if that was the best model for it to use to reach consumers.
Predictably, the comments were met with diverse and competing perspectives from thought leaders and practitioners in an industry that continues to present marketers with a dizzying array of solutions.
On its face, this public expression of doubt appears to directly undermine a foundational brick of Facebook?s value proposition to marketers and further fuels the ongoing debate about how to maximize the return on ad spend in social channels.
In reality, the comment was not an indictment of the specific audience platform or of social overall, but rather an acknowledgement by P&G that after reviewing its performance data, it had identified shortcomings in its current paid social strategy. The news here is that P&G is not alone. The challenges of funnel stage weighting, audience targeting and attribution in social are daunting to even the most sophisticated marketers, and P&G?s announcement shines a light on the fact that even advertisers that find success through social still have unanswered questions.
For the social channel to maintain its extraordinary growth trajectory, it needs to provide better answers by providing marketers a clearer view into how advertiser spend drives results in the increasingly complex customer journey. These insights are critical to optimizing marketer...