They aren't called soap operas for nothing.  The genre of daytime television (and at one time radio) dramas was started in part by Procter and Gamble.  The maker of Ivory soap produced soap operas for a couple of decades, and then spent a lot of ad dollars sponsoring them.  But now they are putting their money into social media, according to Associated Press business writer Dan Sewall:

"The digital media has pretty much exploded," marketing chief Marc Pritchard said in an interview. "It's become very integrated with how we operate, it's become part of the way we do marketing."

The last P&G-produced soap opera, "As The World Turns," went off the air in September. The show was the leading daytime soap for decades, but had lost some two-thirds of its audience at the end.

Over the years, P&G produced 20 soap operas for radio and TV. But ratings for daytime dramas have been sinking for years, as women, their target audience, increasingly moved into the workplace, switched to talk and reality shows, and spent more time using online media and social networking sites.

This would appear to be a significant moment in the transition of ad dollars from broadcast to digital, given that P&G is the world's biggest advertiser.  Read the article here.