Social media campaigns seemed to dominate the first half of 2018. It seemed like the gravy train would never end, as Facebook began to block various ads and enforce stricter guidelines in how they were managing their content, it became clear that Facebook had proven itself as an incredibly powerful tool for marketers.

Amidst the hype cycle surrounding the Trump campaign and Cambridge Analytica, many in the digital marketing space seemed to pour more advertising dollars into increasingly elaborate campaigns. Despite the constant need for variation in a digital campaign, along with testing, measuring and learning, it seemed that digital media as a whole thought they had finally been able to strike it rich.

While social media advertising may offer an attractive CPC, CPL and CPA, these come at a cost. Brands that are completely sold on exposing themselves through paid channels on social media platforms ignore the fundamental question that all digital marketers face.

Many in the industry seem to point out the fact that digital marketing has the distinct advantage of being able to measure intention based on specific keywords, phrases and so on. For most marketers, the ability to measure intention is what gives digital marketing so relevant.

Affinity campaigns on social are still effective due to the lack of invasiveness, as consumers may be blissfully unaware of the mechanism with which they were targeted for an affinity campaign. In this way, affinity on social clearly still works.

The biggest fallout that occurred with the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the trials of Facebook appearing before congress, is that consumers became increasingly aware of the targeting mechanisms that Facebook would use to present ads to them.

By being more aware, it would appear that intention campaigns and “intention hunting” has kind of gone out the window. Why would a consumer actively click on an ad for camping gear, knowing full well that they typed in the word camping gear in messenger chat mere seconds ago?

The thinking of “strike while the iron is hot” is fading with increasing consumer awareness. Of course, digital campaigns do not have any issue in targeting based on specific interests, but seriously:

Intention works for SEM. It clearly works for SEO, and frankly, it would be folly to suggest that intention doesn’t work in digital.

What doesn’t work as much is intention mapping on social. Social media users are nowhere near as engaged as people think they are, and as we all know, exposure dollars are worthless without engagement dollars.

That’s not to say that social media marketing doesn’t work. It definitely does, it just doesn’t work in the way marketers want it to. Intention mapping for a social media user, whether they are on LinkedIn, Facebook etc does not indicate their intention to purchase.

If you do find yourself intention mapping, try to do so from a user’s perspective. Give people the intention to be informed, rather the intention to purchase. You might be pleasantly surprised.