Is social media the end of paid media?

My answer to the question on Quora: Is Social Media the end of paid media 

No, it's about being smarter and being more focused as many have pointed out in their answers. Recently I read an interesting blog about  Facebook Organic Reach Plummeting. What's more interesting is the comment thread and as many would have pointed out in the thread, Facebook as such is a big challenge, but traditionally Google has found a really interesting way to integrate all these attributes and making paid media better overall. The key is of course to find these aspects and fine tune it and ensure that throughout all media you are using these tactics. Rinse - Repeat

1. Focus on Acquisition and methods to directly reach out once you've paid for Social Media.
2. Targeting should be integrated via all other mechanisms too.
3. Drive optimization through focused rather than spend money on bombarding across all channels and media.
4. Learn what your user behavior is and customize your spends.
5. The goal should be to get them back to your properties and engage with you on your own turf. Advertise to get them off of FB and onto your site to download your whitepapers, watch your videos, sign up for your newsletter, buy a product from you, attend your conference, etc.(As mentioned in comments)
6. Convert your fans and followers to an owned list or something you control.
7. "I think most business owners have no problem with paying Facebook for advertising, I believe the primary problem is having to pay to get new fans, and then pay again to reach the same fans you just paid for. Then repeating this cycle again and again. Most small businesses are willing to pay for Facebook advertising, but they simply cannot afford to promote every single post." Interesting comment on the blog by Zach. 

This basically is a problem with Facebook and the same is very well addressed via Google media buying and adwords. 

So if you look at it overall,  the thing Facebook avoided for a long while and now suddenly is trying to get at (Extort brands via strong ad tactics) will cost them for sure, while Google will smile their way into advertisers' pockets.

 
Srinivas has been a communications professional for over 15 years. He has worked with and built India's largest digital agencies from the ground up and been part of their acquistion journey. Social Wavelegnth (now Mirum, part of the WPP group) and Kinnect, now part of the Interpublic Group (IPG). He's also been a public speaker, keynote speaker at various large panels/events of the likes of BBC Knowledge Summit, Blockchain Summit Bangalore. And has been a guest lecturer at IIM, Symbiosis, Indian Institute of Digital Education.

He has been blogging since 2005. And also been author at various publications, that include Startup India by ZDNet, Social Samosa, Lighthouse Insights.  His passion for Writing, Advertising, Creativity, Digital, Blockchain and Future Tech is what drives him each day.