A newly released study reports that 84% of social marketers are not measuring ROI from the channel. In reading this, my first reaction is what’s wrong with the other 16% of marketers? Social media is a truly up-the-funnel engagement. Social platforms have been constructed to facilitate engagement between people, not advertisers and consumers. Just as the obsession over attribution models threatens to bog down the overall effectiveness of media channels, so too does this thinking in the social space. Most marketers are still struggling simply to get into the space in a non-intrusive and relevant manner that fits the medium and the audience. And those already a part of the social conversation need to focus on measuring the channel’s impact for what it is.

Shortly after a corporate acquisition and introduction to the world of traditional advertising, I was asked by someone, “What kind of GRPs can we get from search?” Once I got the definition of a gross rating point, I set off to try and figure out how to equate search to TV. In the end, we all came to realize that search is vastly different from TV; to try and measure it in the same manner is both foolish and not terribly productive. The function and value is different, and to try and make a single metric tell the full story minimizes the value each provides on its own.

Now the pendulum has swung the other way and people are questioning why better ROI measurement of social isn’t happening. That’s not to say that when you can track from social to conversion you shouldn’t, but…that’s by and large not the point of social. Social is about being in the conversation and having consumers introduced and become aware of your products and their features and benefits. There’s a payoff to measure in that alone, but the ROI piece will often happen down the funnel in channels like paid search. To get ahead of yourself as a marketer and expect social to deliver on that will cause more problems and lead to less fruitful investments in the channel in the short term.