Ex-intern on the Facebook ads team here. Facebook's role in the marketing funnel is not to get from interested customers to buy from the company. Its role is a

Ex-intern on the Facebook ads team here. Facebook's role in the marketing funnel is not to get from interested customers to buy from the company. Its role is at the level of TV advertisements and display ads: Build awareness. RWW is going about it the wrong way. I don't think Facebook is trying to be the #1 in terms of direct sales driver (for the 7%, they're probably like Zynga or on-Facebook apps). Facebook is unlikely to become more effective than search in that regard, but that's because the latter is intentions-driven. How can they tell whether the awareness being built contributed to sales? Surely they can run randomized (controlled) tests and see if it makes a difference (I think Neilson does research in this field). But it appears from the article that RWW (nor the companies it interviewed) did not do that level of research. If you want to use Facebook to get from unaware visitor to paid customer, it's going to be harder than using AdWords.