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

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

#261

Post by tomkarlo »

larrys wrote: post #258
tomkarlo wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an employee, it's not the federal government you'd worry about. It's your own company's lawyers, etc. You're much more likely to get in trouble internally for violating the company's policies about making statements related to the stock valuation than any outside entity. Employees at Google (and many other tech companies) are often privy to what would be considered "inside information" about the company's future p…

"You're much more likely to get in trouble internally for violating the company's policies" So is there a specific policy in writing regarding what you can and can't say? The issue certainly isn't revealing non-public information of a specific nature which is fairly obvious to keep under wraps. I believe what matters is the amount of specificity. For example you can't say "Our earnings will be up this quarter so buy…

It's hard to make any kind of statement about the value of a stock without making an implied statement about future performance, given that most of the value is based on expected future outcomes.

Generally, the employee handbook of any public company will explicitly forbid employees from making statements that connect to either future performance or other major non-public info such as products or hiring. (If for no other reason than to protect the company itself from accusations that it's letting its people "pump" it's stock.)

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

#262

Post by MartinCron »

thebigshane wrote: post #260
jrockway wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, "dealership"? That's the part of the equation that everyone wants gone.

Who buys a car without sitting in it first?

I would love to decouple the showroom (sitting in the car, test drive, whatever) from the dealership. If a car manufacturer were to create a space were I could spend some quality time with the car without any threat of encountering a commissioned dealer, I would love it.

Then, I can choose where and how I buy the car later. The manufacturer would benefit from this no matter how I buy the car. Keeping these "shark-free-showrooms" stocked with demo cars, coffee, pastries, and branded swag would just be a general marketing expense.

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

#263

Post by lsc »

fluidcruft wrote: post #209
steve8918 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like search is the be all and end all reason why people use the Internet. It's not. It's obvious that a Google employee would believe this, and believe me, I think Google ads are amazingly effective when used with Google search. I've just started using Adwords and it's great. But Facebook is entirely different from Google search, and there is no reason why their monetization techniques need to be th…

I'm not sure general brand awareness efforts are as financially valuable as interactions with customers that are in "I'm about to buy something" mode. When someone intends to move money, getting a piece of the action is more valuable and I think search engines are where people go to find reviews, prices etc (this also includes commerce sites that rely on a search interface--Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist). On the other han…

>I'm not sure general brand awareness efforts are as financially valuable as interactions with customers that are in "I'm about to buy something" mode.

Maybe? Personally, I spend all my advertising dollars/effort (and good brand building requires far more effort than dollars.) on brand building, and as little as possible on per-customer sales (except as it relates to the 'brand building' - support is part of that.)

I mean, it's like commission. For co-location, it's traditional to give the referring party 10% of what the customer pays you for the life of their contract. (sometimes it's for the life of the customer, and through any upgrades, too.) - every customer pays a different price for the same product, and you are expected to spend hours selling to the customer.

My approach is to put the price and information on the website, and then advertise that. Spend little effort on each individual sale.

The advantage of per-customer effort is that you can specially craft your offering to charge as much as that particular customer can pay.

The disadvantage, of course, is that is a lot of work, and it doesn't help your reputation any. This is a big reason why IAAS is crushing co-location; It literally takes months to get the real price out of a co-location provider, while amazon has the prices right there on the website. (I mean, the off the bat price is about twice as high as the "real price" after negotiating and looking around in co-location. Cogent quoted me $3/Mbps six months ago. I signed papers at $0.65/Mbps. There isn't as much room when it comes to power? but my highest quote is easily twice the price of the lowest quote.)

I don't know about you, but as a customer? I will pay more to know the price up front (and to be reasonably sure that I will pay a similar price if I need more later) - I mean, I won't pay 400% more, but I would pay 30% more, that negotiation isn't free on either side.

So yeah, I think brand building is the better advertising value in the long term. It is more effort, though; writing articles probably has a better return than buying ads for brand building. (buying ads has a place, too.)

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

#264

Post by hansef »

nikcub wrote: post #240
billpatrianakos wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly your main point but I have to agree that there's nothing stopping Facebook from being the next MySpace. Seriously. Not a thing. I think at this point the massive user base and their investment (their friends, photos, life in general) is about the only thing keeping them from switching. But even that can be overcome by others simply by making the switch easier by importing that information (think using Fac…

There seems to be a line of argument in this thread that goes something like this: 1. Google do very well with search advertising because it has intent 2. Facebook advertising is not based on intent 3. Ergo, Facebook advertising sucks Display advertising is a very, very large part of overall advertising. Display advertising is larger than search advertising online. Further, intent or search based advertising relies o…

Display and and media placement are all about demographic targeting. My take is that Facebook's revenue breakthrough occurs when they figure out how to get all that money going to media buys to flow through them based on their ability to microtarget viewer demographics as this content moves online. I think that Facebook's take on the Adsense model doesn't necessarily mean advertising on third-party websites. See also: Facebook should buy Netflix.

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

#266

Post by malandrew »

trotsky wrote: post #109
malandrew wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent is huge. I've never been one to click on Google Ads except in real rare instances. Only once I observed my mom using Google did I realize the full value of intent and google ads while searching. She wanted to watch an episode of The Good Wife that she had missed so she searched in the Safari omnibar for "watch The Good Wife" and the first div under the search bar is an ad to some site that was not CBS that had…

I'm not really sure if or how this should rewrite your conclusions, but cbs does stream full episodes of the good wife http://www.cbs.com/shows/the_good_wife/video/

The most recent episode I don't think is listed. However this may have changed from when I helped my mom with this stuff.

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

#267

Post by Amand33pverma »

untog wrote: post #165
joering2 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a problem here. Most of folks here, including myself, over the span of one weekend could write a downloadable version of a Visual Basic application with a built-in Internet Explorer Window where you login to your facebook and then the app scrap (download) all data you ever had, all messages, photos, etc, everything within a couple of minutes, elegantly packet into zip, xml or whatever format you wish to h…

then the app scrap (download) all data you ever had, all messages, photos, etc, everything within a couple of minutes If you think you could download people's entire photo collections in a "couple of minutes" then you underestimate the insane number of photos uploaded to Facebook every day.

Aman verma
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