While some of the hoopla surrounding Molson’s Facebook debacle was warranted – it also seemed to showcase that companies are looking at new and inventive ways of using social media for marketing as opposed to the traditional mass media approach. To this end Veritas Communications has just published a survey of Canadian citizens and business leaders (yes, before the comments start I know Molson is now American) with some results that certainly seem to back this idea up.

The full results can be found here [PDF], but for a quick overview it appears that one in two Canadian business leaders say social media is becoming more important that mass media. It doesn’t get more straightforward than that. 46% say social media tools like Facebook, YouTube, and blogs are becoming even more important that television, radio, newspapers and magazines.

Veritas also highlights the interesting fact that while 66% of the 444 businesses polled don’t think employees should be allowed to use any of these social tools at work, 34% thought it was very important for their employees to participate in and understand the medium. I would expect these numbers to level out and perhaps even swing in the opposite direction as business networks like LinkedIn continue to grow.

As I said at the end of my Molson/Facebook piece and these results seem to back up, we should expect to see a lot more social advertising going forward.