This isn't a popular thing to say. But despite that many entrepreneurs these days include Facebook and MySpace in their business plans as "marketing strategies," these sites aren't exactly the most useful tools on the Internet when it comes to pushing a new start-up or small business. In theory, social media should be a great way to reach millions of potential of customers, but in theory, they should also make a ton of money and live up to their billion dollar valuations. They don't.

We finally got a little validation today for our admittedly unhip opinion from the Association of National Advertisers. They recently surveyed their members—who include client-side marketers, media agencies, and creative groups—on a myriad of topics related to marketing and advertising. While the responses were what you'd generally expect (most agencies will spend more money on marketing next year than they did this year, for instance), surprisingly, the marketers gave social media a big, fat thumbs down. When asked what their preferred social media site was for driving brand growth, here's how they answered: None (32%), YouTube (20%), Facebook (18%), All (12%), LinkedIn (10%), MySpace (6%), and Twitter (3%).

Let's repeat that in case you missed it: the majority of professional marketers and creative execs say that "none" is their favorite social media site for pushing a brand. And we thougth social media was supposed to be the darling of young, hip marketers.