General Motors will pull some $10 million in paid advertising on Facebook,
the Wall Street Journal reported, striking a discordant note with the
growing public frenzy over the social network’s pending IPO.
GM marketing executives apparently started reviewing the company’s
Facebook strategy earlier this year, and eventually determined that it
wasn’t getting much mileage out of paid ads, unnamed individuals told
the WSJ. The automaker, however, will continue to expand its use of free
marketing on Facebook.
Marketing chief Joel Ewanick told the newspaper that GM “is definitely
reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is
effective and important.” In this sense, “content” refers to GM’s company page on Facebook and similar promotional initiatives that Facebook permits at no cost to companies
