By Meghan Sharkey, Director of Marketing

Over the past few years, social has been fighting for the fifth seat at the advertising roundtable. Traditionally, there have always been the three dominant seats: Print, Radio, and TV. As the Internet became more popular, we began to see a fourth seat emerge: Digital. Digital advertising is a little bit more complicated than our original three seats and requires a deeper understanding of the World Wide Web and how users seek information on it.

With time we began to see the rise of the digital landscape and new ways in which marketers could better utilize it for their advertising initiatives. Digital eventually separated into two categories: Search and Display. Display advertising is more contextually based and targets users by content, interests, and topics. On the other hand, search advertising enables text ads to be displayed in search results when triggered by certain keywords.

Now with the evolution of social media, we see a fifth seat appear at the advertising roundtable: Social. A big misconception is that social falls under the digital umbrella when in reality social is its own unique advertising medium and deserves its own chair at the table. Social encompasses the same paid media (ie. clicks, impressions, CTR) component as digital but also works with earned and owned channels as well.

Whereas digital advertising is concerned with the consumer’s immediate action and behavior, social focuses on consumer engagement and continuous interaction with the brand. In order to effectively advertise across social networks, marketers need to create a strategy to engage the consumer and continue the conversation. Social advertising can be looked at as a conversation between the consumer and the brand, an ongoing dialogue with constant feedback from both ends. Digital advertising is comparable to a one-way street of information with no room for consumer feedback. Thus, social is its own separate advertising entity and should be seen as and treated as such.