• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 23, 2008

A debate is presently taking place on the viability of monetizing social media, and just how many media dollars its set to consume.

The optimist: Seth Goldstein, CEO and Co-Founder, SocialMedia Networks, argues that it's only matter of time before social media spending occurs at the beginning of campaign buys. Marketers, however, have to first begin making their ads social.

The pessimist: Brian Wieser, SVP, MAGNA Global, who says it just doesn't cost that much money to make social media advertising effective “That's the whole point.” … “The brand that is Google spent how much on advertising to build their brand?” … “It could be market expanding more than anything else,” added Wieser in terms of social media.