The past year has brought significant scrutiny to the social media landscape. Security (or lack thereof) has been the latest “trending topic” for mainstream media, as major players like Facebook begin to introduce new and innovative applications to help third parties begin to target their communications more effectively. On a recent flight back from Raleigh, I read Time’s article about how Facebook is changing the way we communicate and interact with one another, and although a bit mind-numbing and scary, it makes sense when you really look at the evolution of digital marketing over the past 15 years.

Back when I was an account executive at Wunderman, working on integrated plans with Y&R, Burson-Marsteller, and The Media Edge, agency teams always made room for “online spend” without a strong foundation for why it was so necessary—just that everyone was doing it, so therefore we must do it as well. At the time, marketers were trying to sort through click-through data as it applied to the overall impressions that our clients were after. If there was a strong eCommerce storefront, then we could obviously track conversions. But where and who we were communicating to was really a model of testing and trial. A lot of money wasted, to hit that sweet spot…and all without really understanding our customer. Who were they? And what were they telling us they were looking for?

But now, applications such as Facebook Connect are allowing marketers with tighter budgets a chance to target customers based on profile data that is probably more accurate and honest than anything Neilson or Simmons could gather 10 years ago. And this data, in turn, really fosters the immediate engagement that is so critical in today’s purchase environment.

By opening up online discussions on a product or service, enabling virtual trial, or sharing purchase behavior with peers, the engagements that these new applications provide all fall within the old traditional interaction model that agencies have been following for years—except that the new social Web can evolve with the customer in mere seconds, rather than wait for the next annual planning meeting. As long as the sharing of information remains in the control of the consumer, I think the marketer, customer, and open Web will have a long and lasting marriage together.