Agreed. The whole "fan page" thing can be a total money pit unless a marketer knows exactly what he's trying to get from the investment. Conversely, I've had f

Agreed. The whole "fan page" thing can be a total money pit unless a marketer knows exactly what he's trying to get from the investment. Conversely, I've had fantastic results from targeted ad buys on Facebook. In particular, mobile app install buys. Great results, decent tracking, easy to analyze from an ROI and LTV standpoint. Just because you can target people by #anything doesn't mean they'll care about your content. Your content has to fit what you're targeting and whom you're targeting. I feel as though a lot of brand marketers -- ordinarily extremely smart people -- lost their senses about this when they first jumped on the Facebook bandwagon. I've seen some very sophisticated AdWords buyers treat Facebook like a Magic 8 Ball, for instance. It blows my mind.