The “marketing mix” is a concept that many of the fly-by-night self-proclaimed “digital marketers” who peddle “social media” seem completely unaware of. To them, it’s about social media and nothing else. TV sucks, print sucks, etc. In their world, a multi-billion dollar brand can survive and thrive on Facebook alone.

“Social media” may be a small but worthwhile part of the marketing mix for some brands but that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be nearly as important as many have argued it will be. After years of hype, the results speak for themselves.

The problem is that social media has been (and still is being) pitched as the “disruptive media” you speak of when it clearly isn’t disruptive.

Exactly how important it is depends on the business situation. Some products are driven by word of mouth (e.g. wine, music, movies, emerging travel destinations), finding a small group of mavens and going deep with them has value. Some products are less subtle, with clear value, and pretty straight forward (hemorrhoid creme, and alot of stuff P&G sells), not really a Word of Mouth product.

I do think social networking platforms and conversational will grow and be important, but probably not as important or profitable as disruptive media.

The frustrating thing is lack of attention the “digital luminaries” give to straight up media or creating content actually good enough to warrant disruption that gets sold to advertisers.

In ten years, we may all look back on this Web 2.0 “revolution” with a chuckle. Methinks this is all a distraction from the real revolution that’s putting the Internet in the palm of people’s hands.

I think the secret to advertising in these spaces is to promote stuff that is directly related to user’s activity. If you are looking at your friend’s Tijuana pics, I could probably sell you some tequila, a trip to Tijuana, or a camera that take pics that are better than your friend’s. Crest toothpaste — probably not.

It’s a lot like this joke about a guy who goes into a store to pick up some tampons for his wife and gets sold on a whole set of camping gear.

That said, the future isn’t exactly rosy at MySpace. You may recall that Google was surprised by the poor performance of its ads, which really hurt given the significant amount of money it had guaranteed. And there were reports a few months ago that MySpace had missed its revenue targets.

I think News Corp. will be able to milk the MySpace cow for a bit of time and it has done well given the price it paid to buy MySpace but I also think there are far fewer misconceptions about MySpace’s advertising business: it’s a pure volume play.

There’s no innovation and there’s very little that’s “social” about any of MySpace’s advertising programs.

Facebook, on the other hand, steers clear of the glitzy ads that could easily put their balance sheet in the black. My guess is the hipsters that run that shop are too cool to “sell out” like MySpace did years ago, preferring instead the more subtle, monochromatic variety of advertising that made Google their first billion (and their second, and their third, and so forth). However, they clearly overestimate the intelligence of their user base, if the content of their ads is anything to go by. Dating services, home businesses, and, just today, I saw an ad luring me to “own a log cabins” (sic!). That typo alone pinpoints the mediocrity of “self serve” advertising campaigns. Che Zuckerberg may never get his billion dollar buyout, but at least he can down some acai berry juice from one of his sponsors.

(I also read somewhere that Zuckerberg is less interested in cashing out — or even taking Facebook beyond break-even — than he is in some holistic “change the world” vision. While I don’t believe everything I read, their actions so far seem to point to that truth. Oh, except for the IPO rumors from early this year that have since faded faster than subprime mortgages.)