Or so says Judy Shapiro, marketing veteran and Trench Wars blogger, in a recent Advertising Age story. We agree. Judy points to technical innovation as the driving force, enabling advertisers to capitalize on a potent combination of audience reach, measurability and engagement to drive social media ad effectiveness at scale. This, along with natural market maturation (as Judy says, advertisers now realize “thousands of Twitter followers have no direct relevance to effectiveness and Facebook alone can not launch campaigns”), means that advertisers are ready to take the plunge with cross-platform social media strategies and tactics designed to get achieve maximum awareness. Examples? Judy suggests multi-channel (social network, mobile, video, even “traditional) “content campaigns” designed to offer audiences useful, actionable information, putting customer service on the social media front line, and using the right kind of ad networks as the “social media carpet layer” of the campaign.

What do you think – is social media ready to deliver a mass audience?