What Proctor & Gamble May Have Missed With Social Advertising

My friend Mark Schaefer has an interesting reaction to the Proctor & Gamble shift on social advertising over at {grow} today. He seems rather shocked that P&G decided to shift away from finely targeted social advertising, instead saying it will now pull back to a more broad approach on networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Mark says toward the end of his analysis:

On the one hand, the P&G revelation shakes long-held assumptions, but on the other hand, I don’t think we necessarily need to make wholesale changes to strategy. We need to consider this new perspective but adjust based on our own products and markets.

I agree with him, certainly. But I think we’re all forgetting something critical here: There are more than two ways to slice an apple.

P&G’s declaration (detailed here) was they went too far with niche targeting and are now looking to reach the most people for the most efficient use of their ad dollars. Which is a fancy way of saying, “We’re spending too much money without the good return and don’t want to be stupid.” The fact they seem to overlook is hyper-targeting is a great strategy FOR SOME THINGS.

I commented on Mark’s post with this:

You can get great returns with niche targeting for CERTAIN messages. You get better returns with mass targeting for certain other types of messages. If P&G was just trying to get as many people as possible to buy product X, mass targeting is generally (but not always) more effective. If they were trying to start a message seeding play with a small demographic or audience sample, then mass targeting will fail every time.

My comment went on to use an analogy I believe is important for you to understand. Imagine hyper-targeting with social advertising is a drill. The drill comes with a bit already inserted in the end — a flat-head screwdriver. You can flip it around and it becomes a Phillip’s head screwdriver. And that’s all P&G uses. They seem to have forgotten that you can buy dozens of other bits at varying sizes to use the drill most effectively.

The problem isn’t targeted advertising doesn’t work just as it isn’t that the drill doesn’t drill. The problem is the person using it probably isn’t finding the right bit for the specific job at hand.

Think about that before you follow the P&G lemmings off the cliff and give up on targeted ad spend.