Social media is ideal for online ads

If you believe the research, for the 10% to 20% of a retailer’s customers who buy online, a further 50% or more surf the net at some point in their shopping journey.

Despite this, retailers valiantly cling to traditional and long understood media like TV and press, and despite the growing evidence that customers spend more of their time these days online, only 20% of retail media spend goes online.

In the old days, life was pretty clear. Not easy, but clear. Traditional media was used to build brands and convey brand statements, and the internet was used to drive sales. Web media consisted mainly of display advertising predominantly with the internet service providers (ISPs), affiliates - that for the large part were special interest websites - and a variety of search engines.

Fast-forward and the online media space has seen some subtle shifts and become far more complex to navigate. Although the ISPs still play a big part, there are many high-volume, content-driven sites that advertisers turn to in order to get their message across.

Search, although now dominated by Google, has remained a profitable route to market for the “long tail” - ie, serving the customer who knows exactly what make and model they are looking for. But the jury is out on how profitable generics and brand advertising is.

And affiliates, which started out being special interest, content-heavy websites that took the customer half way to buying a product before sending them to you, have become dominated by sites that merely collate deals or advertise discount codes.

So where has the content moved to? Where do people form opinions on what to buy and how do they decide which retailer to choose? The hottest new destination would be social media - if only it was comprehensible to advertisers.

Facebook claims 300 million users and 15,000 websites and applications that have implemented Facebook connect. And with just under 2 million users, Twitter continues to raise its appeal.

While it is difficult to compare favourably with Bumble’s 15,000 followers who kept abreast of the goings-on at the Oval this summer on Twitter to Sky’s 2 million-plus viewers, it shows what can be achieved if the content suits the media being used. So is this where we should move our advertising to?

Advertisers will claim that they cannot be sure who will see their ads on Facebook, whereas they can be fairly certain of the demographic that sits down to watch Coronation Street or The X-Factor.

This is probably true. Not because Facebook users cannot be segmented, analysed and evaluated in the same way, but because it simply hasn’t been done yet.

And it hasn’t been done yet partly because we still measure online media in the same old fashioned way - click through and conversion - and few online media owners take the time to offer advertisers the soft information, such as the capability to monitor brand awareness, that will ultimately draw the big money away from traditional media to online.

Indira Thambia is an independent retail adviser