But it’s really only a matter of time before marketers begin to figure out the social media conundrum and actually make it pay off. And we might have those first glimmerings in the “State of Inbound Marketing report” released this week by HubSpot and reported by eMarketer.com.

HubSpot’s study indicates that lead generation spending is 60% less among companies that dedicate at least one-half of their budget to inbound marketing tactics like search, blogs and social media.

Now, this doesn’t surprise us—at least, not the part about search. We’ve had a lot of success using cost-effective AdWords campaigns leading dedicated landing pages to generate leads for clients. Pay-per-click ads and SEO strategies fell below or near the average cost-per-lead 65% or 83% of the time, respectively.

But we were a little surprised to find that 63% of companies rated lead generation through social media as below average in cost-per-lead. And being skeptical journalist types, we wondered about the quality of the leads (leads mean nothing unless they turn into customers, after all)—until we looked at the chart that showed that, for business-to-consumer businesses, seven out of 10 companies had found customers through Facebook. (For business-to-business companies, LinkedIn was the most effective social media customer acquisition tool.)

So, apparently, there’s hope for social media as a marketing tool. But the lessons we’ve learned along the way—that campaigns that can’t be measured against concrete business objectives aren’t worth the investment—still hold true. If you aren’t realizing a positive ROI from your online marketing—or if you aren’t tracking your ROI in the first place—you’re wasting money, regardless of whether you’re investing in PPC ads or Facebook fan pages.

Which this magazine has. And yet, despite owning its category, it still struggles to adequately monetize its website.

And it’s not alone. Over the past few months, I’ve met with senior managers at some of Canada’s biggest media companies. While some are succeeding in the new media ad world, many are failing.

This isn’t news, of course. Everyone knows that traditional media companies are struggling to survive the shift to web publication.

What fewer people talk about is one of the primary reasons why: an obsessive focus on the quantity of a site’s traffic rather than the quality.

The primary culprit, from what I can see, is cost-per-thousand (CPM) ad sales. Why? Media buyers representing brands haggle to drive CPM prices down, as their clients want to see the greatest exposure for the least spend. Unfortunately, this means that they pay far less attention to the quality of impressions than the quantity.

This is particularly problematic for niche publications, which offer a highly targeted audience, but far fewer impressions than general interest publications.

One solution I’d like to recommend to niche publishers, based on my experience on both sides of the fence: focus on return on investment, and change the conversation.

When we represent clients buying media, we’re always looking for return on investment.  With our web analytics work, we know that quantity is no measure of success. Ultimately, actions relevant to clients’ business objectives are meaningful. Everything else is just a step along the way.

So if you’re a niche publisher, think about programs, systems and sales pitches that emphasize return on investment. This can include everything from demonstrating your audience’s receptiveness to particular products, to implementing a custom cost-per-action advertising platform.

Advertisers will pay more money for your audience if they’ll get returns unavailable elsewhere.

But they won’t just take your word for it.