"Nobody's going to be fired for spending on Facebook."

Thus a digital-media executive summed up the sentiment on Madison Avenue as advertisers from American Express to Zappos are trying to stretch every marketing dollar. The theory is that wary financial investors will applaud spending on social media because of its lower cost and growing reach. So it follows that the ad dollars flowing to social media are buoying the ad economy at large, right?

Think again. While social media is getting a lot of attention and spending, the big bucks are going where they've always gone -- TV. Social-budget dollars are coming from print, radio and other web properties.