General Motors couldn’t have picked a worse time to pull out of paid advertising on Facebook when they announced their decision the week of the Facebook IPO. Now, the two companies are in talks to bring paid ads back into the mix at a crucial point in Facebook’s growth as a public company.
WSJ reports that Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg spoke with GM Chief Executive Daniel Akerson about the issue with transparency at the heart of the matter. General Motors wasn’t sure if their $10 million spend in 2011 (a fraction of their multi-billion dollar advertising budget) was having a positive effect and Facebook was unable to prove that it was working.
“It is a myth that Facebook advertising doesn’t work,” said Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s head of measurement and insight.
The social network is working on better reporting for General Motors and other advertising customers, though they will not be giving special treatment to the auto manufacturer. Facebook’s revenue in 2011 was $3.7 billion, but earning back the business would help fight the perception that businesses can get more out of Facebook’s free services than their paid advertising.
General Motors considers trying Facebook ads again

Disclosure: Some of the links in this article are affiliate links and we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase, which helps us to keep delivering quality content to you. Here is our disclosure policy.
Similar Stories
Full of dreams and larger than life disasters, it seemed for a while that the world of tech startups is...
The law is often depicted as an extremely slow industry, slow because of its heavy contracts and legalese, the very...
X (formerly Twitter) has ignited controversy by blocking links to Signal.me, a domain linked to the widely used encrypted messaging...