An eyeball is an eyeball is an eyeball. Falser words were never spoken. Every time I hear someone brag about the success of their digital creative by pointing simply to the number of fans they have on Facebook as proof, I want to poke mine out. Sure, determining the impact (and value) of “engagement” with digital content in social media is still tricky, but when it comes to measuring exposure to content through social media campaigns, old rules still apply – the quality of eyeballs can’t be overlooked.

A recent post column in AdAge (Sorry, but Counting Facebook ‘Fans’ or Video Views Won’t Help Your Brand), correctly identifies a troublesome practice that too many marketers follow – using topline metrics like the quantity of Facebook fans or video views as the only measures of success rather than also considering the quality of these impressions and engagements. It’s this question of quantity versus quality on which the effective analysis of social media impact hinges.

A look at our analysis of traditional media metrics is instructive. We needn’t necessarily change how we look at data when it comes to examining quality of impressions. Neilson and other auditing systems allow us to look at demographic information to see how efficient our ads have been in reaching the desired target audience in traditional media. In much the same way, many of the major social media platforms now offer a tremendous amount of data about users who engage with our content. Facebook and YouTube insights offer demographic information on fans as well as viewers of ads. Twitter has been the slowest to offer robust analytics, but recently announced intentions to do so in the near future. (more…)