Social Media: The New Television?

Today I found out what happens when social media starts to go mainstream. An article written by Richard Ord, CEO of iEntry Inc (whom I normally don't disagree this vehemently with) claims that Social Media Will Succeed. This I agree with. However, he then ventures to claim that it's greatest asset lies in it's ability to deliver an audience as large as TV and that eventually, advertisers would realize that they could reach this massive audience with their video ads.

With all due respect to Mr. Ord, I have to take issue with that statement. The beauty of social media isn't in the numbers, it's in the quality of the numbers. If you reach a million people on TV with your ad for Insurance but only 5,000 of those people are interested in buying insurance you've spent a lot of money on those 5,000 people. With social media, you can reach 5,000 people who are all looking to buy insurance. The targeting properties of social media are priceless, not to mention efficient.

There are, as Ord says, as many people on the internet as there are watching TV, but what they are doing while they watch TV, why they watch TV, what they are saying about TV, etc. isn't information that's readily available and you can't break down your target audience much further than what channel you are placing an ad on. With social media, we can research our demographics and place our shoe video ads on social communities for luxury shoe lovers, or our knockoff purse ads on bargain lover sites with a section for knockoff purses.
At the end of the day, the quality of our numbers greatly trumps quantity.