01. GM To Cut Facebook Advertising
It seems like a no-brainer: placing advertisements on arguably the world's most popular web destination in order to draw attention to new cars and trucks. To General Motors, however, Facebook advertising is an idea whose time has come and gone, as the automaker announced this week that it would be pulling its paid ads from the social media site.
Why has GM elected to give Facebook the cold shoulder? According to the an article in the Huffington Post, the $10 million it spent on Facebook ads simply wasn't providing the kind of return that the brand expected, leading to the decision to focus exclusively on maintaining its product pages on the website. $10 million might seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the $2.8 billion that the General spent on advertising in the U.S. in 2010, but the company is firm in its decision. As might be expected, Ford took the opportunity to take a few shots at GM's 'ineffective' Facebook strategy by way of a different social media site - Twitter - boasting of their own success on Facebook and holding it up as a blueprint for other companies to follow.