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GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

forbes.com

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Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#21

Post by jonknee »

ticks wrote: post #11
jonknee wrote: post #3

> GM spends about $40 million a year on Facebook marketing, according to the Wall Street Journal, about $10 million of which is for paid advertisements. It will continue to post relevant content about the company and its brands on GM’s Facebook pages. The best marketing on Facebook doesn't make Facebook any money.

$30 million sounds like a lot for promoting a brand for free on one platform.

Direct follow up with people is expensive. From the WSJ:

> GM spends about $40 million on its Facebook presence. About $10 million of that is paid to Facebook for advertising, the rest covers content created for the site, agencies that manage the content and daily maintenance of GM's pages, people familiar with the figures said.

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#23

Post by alain94040 »

It really depends on what you are trying to sell. It's pretty obvious that car ads would work better on Google: when you are in the market for a new car, you'll definitely google review sites. A perfect hint to start showing car ads.

I don't think Facebook has the data yet to detect that you are about to buy a car. If you start liking car reviews, maybe, but that's not a typical behavior.

For other products (especially the ones you didn't know you needed), Facebook beats Google hands down. So don't pass judgment one way or another too quickly.

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#24

Post by [deleted] »

rio517 wrote: post #2

I don't think that's the case for everyone. I work at a online advertising firm in DC specializing in political and non-profit work - mostly email list building, soliciting volunteers, awareness, etc campaign activities. We work with AOL, Yahoo, Google and Facebook, among many others. I'm not a fan of FB's policies in general, but... We've found FB to be very effective - on a cost per acquisition basis, much more so…

[deleted]

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#25

Post by fennecfoxen »

rio517 wrote: post #2

I don't think that's the case for everyone. I work at a online advertising firm in DC specializing in political and non-profit work - mostly email list building, soliciting volunteers, awareness, etc campaign activities. We work with AOL, Yahoo, Google and Facebook, among many others. I'm not a fan of FB's policies in general, but... We've found FB to be very effective - on a cost per acquisition basis, much more so…

Yeah, if you're not GM, and not like GM, and not approaching Facebook like GM, then it's not clear you'll have GM's problems reaching out to people on Facebook.

Problems like Republicans attempting to take advantage of your presence to poke fun of you as "government motors". :)

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#26

Post by mindcrime »

dneb7 wrote: post #5

I certainly didn't have a $10MM spend, but I also had dismal results for my B2B campaign. My takeaway is FB is purely a social place where people unwind and don't want to do any 'work' -- whether that is considering a product for their job, or the effort involved in considering a large purchase as rio517 mentions.

Any thoughts on better choices for advertising B2B offerings? Has anybody here tried LinkedIn for that, for example?

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#27

Post by jvanderwal »

With a click-through rate of about 0.051% on Facebook ads [1], I'm not too surprised by this. They also made some changes over the past month to their ad payments, in particular removing the option to manually set your CPM (which is the only option to pay to promote your fan page - it's CPC for an external site). So put together a poor CTR and losing some control over how much you're spending, and this is what happens.

[1] http://www.kikabink.com/news/facebook-ad-click-through-rates...

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#28

Post by rmc »

mindcrime wrote: post #26
dneb7 wrote: post #5

I certainly didn't have a $10MM spend, but I also had dismal results for my B2B campaign. My takeaway is FB is purely a social place where people unwind and don't want to do any 'work' -- whether that is considering a product for their job, or the effort involved in considering a large purchase as rio517 mentions.

Any thoughts on better choices for advertising B2B offerings? Has anybody here tried LinkedIn for that, for example?

Google AdWords?

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#29

Post by rmc »

ssclafani wrote: post #17
ntkachov wrote: post #4

GM kindof has their work cut out for them on facebook. Most of facebook isn't looking for a new car (maybe a used one) and the facebook moms aren't exactly stoked for GM cars.

Your impression of Facebook's user base is about five years out of date. Facebook is closing in on having ~1,000,000,000 members. I would suspect millions of those members are looking for a new car right this second . Facebook needs to find better a way, like Google did, of matching those members with advertisers.

But are they looking for a car while they're on Facebook?

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#30

Post by PedroCandeias »

Banner ads are a relic of the 90s. I fully expect facebook to discontinue them eventually.

Because who cares if ads don't work? GM just endorsed sponsored content (to the tune of $30M, no less), a form of advertisement facebook can easily serve to their ever growing mobile user base.

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