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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

#31

Post by Wilya »

noodle wrote: post #13
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.

I think a better question is how GM measures the effectiveness of their campaigns on Facebook. Its not like you can track the conversion rate from ad click to car buy.

You can't track the conversion rate from a TV ad either. That doesn't mean you can't notice a positive/negative effect related to the presence/absence of the ad. Especially at the scale of GM.

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

#32

Post by raverbashing »

PedroCandeias wrote: post #30

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.

Also, I'm not sure GM's marketing dept. is experienced in advertisement for online media

Sure, it's easy to advertise on FB (or Google Ads). It's a whole different story to make it effective.

Take Google AdWords. If you don't optimize your strategy you'll have a high CPC (cost per click), will probably pay for ineffective words. Also, there are changes you can do to your content (being advertised) that affect your CPC.

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

#33

Post by joering2 »

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.

I agree with you. Me and anyone that I know that uses Facebook already got used to ignoring the right column by default. Slowly but surely it gets to the point that it doesnt really matter what you advertise. I challenge you, if facebook approves it, to put and add "giving money for free" with landing page and see a click rate. It will be similar to advertising anything else, because users are getting smarter (thats good) nowadays and "sounds too good" offers will steer them away.

edit: for that reason, I think Facebook advertising does not work. Or at least, does not work for the _most_ of advertisers. Its just that Facebook is still new and here and there I hear my friends being exciting about "advertising to millions of customers" and they do give it a shoot with a poor results at the end. The point is you have so many people that havent tried that yet that they still bringing cash to FB. But unless FB does something for the ads to work (change its core product?), the $ numbers will only fall.

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

#34

Post by ashray »

scribblemacher wrote: post #9

Am I the only one that thinks there's a really big advertising/personal data mining bubble that's ripe for popping?

No, I sort of agree with you. There seems to be a lot of excitement about how valuable targeted advertising is (once more.. this happened back in the 90s as well..). Social media "managers" popping up in every company, and being paid rather well. (while this should just get filed under PR)

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

#35

Post by javert »

jonknee wrote: post #21
ticks wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

That is insane. Only a bloated bohemoth could manage to spend $30 million on its Facebook-focused HR people.

I admit I've never worked at GM, so if someone can tell me why I'm wrong, please do.

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

#36

Post by Splines »

alain94040 wrote: post #23

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 (especial…

> 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.

I think they have the data, but maybe not the means to mine it. I'm guessing that people are interested in buying a new car at important life milestones and when replacing an older vehicle. It's pretty easy to find those milestones ("here's pictures of our new baby", "Grad 2015, whooooo", "Just started at my new job"). Signals for replacing an older vehicle could be looking up vehicle review pages on facebook (does edmunds.com have a facebook page?), like you mentioned.

So I don't think it's impossible (but definitely non-trivial). I have no idea if it's possible to target ads against the sorts of things people post to their wall/photo albums.

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

#37

Post by CamperBob2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #16

When you're close to an IPO you are very vulnerable to hard-ball negotiation tactics. This could easily be the endgame of 'reduce our rates or else'.

Or "Give us some stock at the opening price, or else."

There is no way for GM to pull this kind of maneuver at this time without looking suspicious.

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

#38

Post by ry0ohki »

jvanderwal wrote: post #27

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 happen…

Comparing click-through rate on a passive site like Facebook (I'm there to socialize and I might happen to see something interesting ad-wise) to an active site Google (I'm there to find a product) seems like a bad comparison. It seems like Facebook ad engagement should be measured my metrics closer to billboards.

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

#40

Post by bgilroy26 »

bradgessler wrote: post #39
jacquesm wrote: post #16

When you're close to an IPO you are very vulnerable to hard-ball negotiation tactics. This could easily be the endgame of 'reduce our rates or else'.

... or Facebook ads don't work.

Not with timing like this, which would create such bad blood. This news item has an ulterior motive.

Not that that precludes the possibility that Facebook ads don't work.

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