Social media was one of the most impactful additions to the field of marketing.

 Social media was one of the most impactful additions to the field of marketing.

By: Justin Wiggins

The first social networking site that resembled our modern depiction of social media was SixDegrees.com. SixDegrees was founded in 1997 and began a new era of marketing strategy, but it wasn’t until 2006 when Facebook signed the first social media Ad deal, “a display partnership with JP Morgan Chase to promote Chase credit cards.”

This Ad deal was quickly followed by YouTube launching ads in 2007, Twitter doing the same in 2010, Instagram and Pinterest in 2013, and finally Snapchat in 2014. This new era of advertising was marked by the development of targeted advertisements.

Targeted advertisements allowed for a far more precise and dexterous use of advertisements. Since people were already logging into social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube with their age and gender, basic assumptions could be made about their preferences in products, and more importantly, the marketing style that they’re most receptive to. These basic statistics on their own are quite powerful marketing tools, but when combined with the data gained from countless hours of media consumption, advertisers are able to become as persuasive as someone who has known you for years.

All of this new and shockingly precise data that is available to anyone who will pay for it, creates a clear demarcation between the old era of marketing and contemporary marketing. The gap between these two marketing eras is so vast, that I would go as far as to say that it’s one of the most influential and impactful additions to the field of marketing.