Does Social Media Marketing Really Work?

This is a question I asked myself long ago. Just like the old tv ads, during the golden years of advertising, every effort of the kind on any social media channel comes with many challenges but must of all, it comes with the fact the it will compete against thousands of other companies trying to reach your market. 

If must people are like me, maybe I am too old or maybe I am stuck in the good old years, but maybe it happens to you as well, don't you also find annoying every youtube ad, specially those without the option to skip after the loooongg first five seconds? - In anger, I seldom jump to another video when such an ad starts then immediately return to the video I wanted to watch first just find another ad, and I repeat the trick until I found my video with an ad that includes the five second wait option or if I am lucky some times I get back to the video and to my pleasure find it without ads.

Bad, cheap commercials, annoying actors or terrible scripts always get the best of me and make me wonder if paying the subscription is worth the cost to avoid such a nightmare.

Another issue is how rarely I am interested in the products presented in the commercials that are thrown at me. This happens specially in facebook and instagram, where I spend time to share my travels or current status with friends and family. I am not interested in any other thing than, sharing and looking at my friends status. There are better ways for me to find out if I qualify to participate in the latest medical research than clicking on an ugly ad.

So, here are some reasons to doubt if social media marketing really works:

People are not interested in your product.

We get upset when forced to watch a video before being able to watch the one we are interested in.

We hate interruptions.

There are many ways to skip the ads.

Your hope to spark some interest it actually produce the opposite effect.

If I pay a subscription, I can avoid all the ads.

So, what was the last ad you actually watched that interested you?

Aren't you tired of the same boring and badly acted ads?