Excellent question. At a company the size of Disney, especially with its bloated bureaucracy, you can't buy a box of paper clips without a lengthy PowerPoint presentation. Al Lutz harped on this in the Pressler era and I think the current climate at TDO it's probably worse. The thing is, when you create a "deck" you are going to push things in the direction you want them to go, conveniently leaving out details that don't support the direction you(and your leaders) want them to go.
So as far as justifying ROI, good question. Even Lou doesn't have 15k twitter followers. I have no clue what that equates to in podcast downloads and unique website hits. I also have no idea how he needs to "prove" any of these metrics to Disney.
Then layer in Allears, TP, Dis, Ricky, *****, and their counts. Then assume there is a LARGE amount of overlap in their fan bases.
So...how far is this social media sphere of influence? How many of those people are captive, and "preaching to the choir"? How do you quantify incremental direct revenue to WDPR as a result of these efforts? You can't.
Even the most ardent pixie dusters on this site will say the doom n gloomers are a small subset of a small subset, and a small groups opinions don't matter. In the grand scheme, how much money are they bringing in to cover the department wages and all the freebies? How much is offset by loss of goodwill due to some of the questionable dealings?
Lots of moving parts, something doesn't smell right to me, you, and others. Is there something else going on? Hmmm