Something I’ve been saying for awhile, companies know that social media is important but are still having a disconnect that they need to invest money into it. From Advertising Age:

Agencies Need to Think More Facebook, Twitter, Less TV:

Agencies Need to Think More Facebook, Twitter, Less TV

Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson Tells Marketers They Should Not Buy Media but ‘Earn’ It

by Michael Learmonth

Published: April 07, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson has seen the future, and it’s in “earned,” not paid, media, which has big implications for marketers, agencies and, of course, the media itself.

Fred Wilson

Photo Credit: Gary He

“There are still a lot of marketers out there buying their media when they could earn it, and earn it a lot less expensively,” he said today at Ad Age’s Digital Conference in New York.While overall spending on marketing may go up, traditional-media outlays are declining, and spending is growing on the creative and technology necessary to implement social campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Agencies have to find a way to continue to make money in this environment.

“The total amount of money flowing out of marketers’ pockets to agencies won’t decline and will likely go up, but the mix is headed for important changes,” Mr. Wilson said.

As a venture capitalist, Mr. Wilson said, he’s funding companies that address the new marketing paradigm, from earned-media platforms such as Twitter and social video site Boxee to next-generation ad agencies such as Federated Media and Clickable, and from analytics firms such as ComScore and Quantcast to tech platforms such as FeedBurner and Dave Morgan’s Simulmedia.

What do earned-media campaigns look like? A lot like Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice” effort on Facebook, which

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