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GM Ditches Facebook Ads, Superbowl Commercials

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Major automakers like General Motors spend a lot of money marketing their products. An unheard of amount of dollars, in fact, go towards trying to sell you a shiny new car, every single day. The effectiveness of certain ads has been called into question lately though, and last week GM made some big news in regards to how it markets.

Just days ahead of the Facebook IPO, GM announced that it was pulling its advertising from the website. Days later GM also confirmed that it would be sitting out this year’s Superbowl commercial advertising opportunity.

Wise move or bold blunder? It depends on who you ask. If you are a Facebook user though, ask yourself…how many advertisements have I clicked on. Probably not too many. Really, is there any 50×50 pixel ad that GM can come up with that will convince someone on the fence to buy their car over a competitors? Again, probably not. In all, GM has pulled about $10 million of advertising from Facebook.

But what about the Superbowl? True, these commercials can be quite memorable and entertaining [2]…but effective? That’s hard to prove. And with the cost of a 30-second spot coming in at a whopping $3.5 million. GM has spent over $80 million on Superbowl advertising alone in the past decade…and considering that they had to declare bankruptcy two years ago, it might stand to reason that all that money was pretty well wasted.

Is pulling its advertisements from Facebook and the Superbowl the right move for GM?