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General Motors: "Facebook Ads Aren't Worth It"
Fluffeh writes "General Motors spends around $40 million per year on maintaining a Facebook profile and around a quarter of that goes into paid advertising. However, in a statement, they just announced that 'it's simply not working.' That's a bit of bad news just prior to the Facebook IPO — and while Daniel Knapp tries to sweeten the news, he probably makes it even more bitter by commenting 'Advertising on Facebook has long been funded by marketing budgets reserved for trying new things. But as online advertising investments in general are surging and starting to cannibalize spend on legacy media, advertisers are rightfully asking whether the money spend is justified because it has reached significant sums now.'"
You mean my loser friend from high school who spends all day in front of his computer posting updates on his shitty life *isn't* the perfect person to target with an ad for a $40,000 new car?!?!?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
If you're perhaps wondering about how this works out for smaller businesses, NPR built an anecdote out of a small locally owned pizza joint in New Orleans trying their hand at targeted social advertising. For $240 they doubled their Facebook fans (at the cost of nearly $1 per 'like') and weren't so sure they'd see the return on that money after asking customers one evening where they heard about Pizza Delicious.
My work here is dung.
but that doesn't seem to stop anyone. I've found that marketing rarely has ever been able to prove that the money they spend actually generates returns.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wait... $40 million dollars, a quarter of which ($10 million) was advertising. The rest was $30 million dollars of which $0 went to Facebook (accounts are free). Where did the rest go, does it really take $30 million dollars of payroll expenses to have a couple of people post status updates and photos? I realize they probably had review teams, photographers, marketing folks, customer service, etc - but $30 million dollars seems absurd.
I'll maintain it for only 20M....
Narcissistic, insecure, low self esteem, they're on facebook to "be seen" and try to feel that their lives are worth something.
Social media is a failure.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Hey GM, I'll maintain your profile for $2 Million a year. By Grabthar's Hammer, oh what a bargain!
Marketer 1: "hey, we don't have enough budget to advertise on Facebook"
Marketer 2: "how do we reach the facebook crowd without spending money?"
"Marketer 1: I know! Let's do a press release that says we can't afford advertising on Facebook, but spin it as us not wanting to advertise on facebook"
Marketer 3: "that's a great idea! let's announce it just days before facebook's public IPO for maximum impact!"
moox. for a new generation.
Facebook has many eyeballs, but those eyeballs don't on average stick around as long as they do for television, or even print media.
If you're a business and you're looking for real bang-for-buck, you're talking Hulu -- the 'middle ground'.
Facebook IPO'ing now is a cash out, not a strategic move. If you remove Zynga from Facebook, it's not really worth anything.
One day a social network will become something permanent, but Facebook won't be that network.
You mean my loser friend from high school who spends all day in front of his computer posting updates on his shitty life *isn't* the perfect person to target with an ad for a $40,000 new car?!?!?
Probably not. Although convincing him that the 2011 Chevrolet Aveo (with an MSRP of $12,000) is the best investment he could make now that his rusted out junker needs a new transmission might be worth a few bucks to GM. If he has income and can get an auto loan from a bank, they're interested in him. America is full of losers like your friend that still need cars to go to their shitty job so they can afford their shitty food, pay their shitty rent and make shitty car payments. Transitioning these sales strategies of "most dependable" or "safest in its class" from TV to online hubs of entertainment isn't too far of a stretch, is it?
My work here is dung.
...cause facebook to start renting/selling their information for profit?
/pull out
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
Why would I buy that, when the aliens do it for free?
Facebook is the most useless thing out there- its only good for data on consumer habits and possibly trends. advertising does not work on facebook the only thing it could be good for is maybe selling your handicrafts to your friends- owner/operator type small business. What is the compelling reason to
"like" a brand besides showing off, ooooohhhh you like bmw - big deal. All of the majors have scaled back or pulled their e-comm stores in facebook, the ipo is coming and it is going to be the biggest scam ever. Social networking's primary currency is privacy, the more they have on you, the more revenue. Its is not traditional ads that companies should be targeting, its the information- health information post you are sick too many times your health insurance goes up, run with speeders, car insurance premiums are higher, smoke dope-or any of you 5000+ friends do- no job, like radical ideas- to cuba with you. Facial recognition in pics- more intelligence on you. Combine this with credit/debt card info and cell phone tracking you are tagged and tracked 24/7.
Ya control is what facebook is- total class slavery and no privacy- people don't even get paid to post or give away their privacy.
Remember when banner ads were paying dollars per 1000 impressions, then it was cents, and now it's essentially fuck all.
Takes the marketing types a while to realize there latest advertising channel isn't quite the atomic powered selling machine they pitched it to their boss as, and quietly adjust their spending downwards i the hope no one notices. Not too long now before the facebook fairydust wears off, Zuckerberg needs to get those shares out on the market ASAP.....
If GM had spent that money on a bit of engineering to get their cars a bit closer to the efficiency of European cars, perhaps people would buy them more? No amount of avertising money will get enough people to buy yesterdecades technology cars
On a more serious note I totally feel for you GM. I spent 20 million advertising my "INVASIVE ANAL PROBE CONSULTING" business and it's just not working. Must be Facebook.
Facebook is not your target audience. You should try direct marketing to the TSA.
May be GM doesn't know how to use it for profit?
"I know that 50% of my ads are effective, I just don't know which 50%"
Attributing conversions (ie, purchase of a new car) to ads is tricky for any business, let alone one like GM where the eventual purchase takes place offline. You can track leads from Facebook ads to your website, but how can you be sure the ads contributed to a purchase down the road? And even if you ask someone who comes into a car dealership "Did you see our ad on Facebook?" or give them a coupon to print and bring with them, how can you be sure how much of that purchase was driven by that ad vs the ads she saw on TV vs the radio vs print?
Facebook ads command a hefty premium over more mainstream online ads because of the ability to finely target specific types of people (ie, people who have "Liked" GM, people who have listed "cars" as an interest, people who have mentioned the Chevy Volt in a conversation...). It's a big problem for Facebook if brands can't attribute this premium ad spend to a measurable increase in sales.
Where is all this money going? You would think online advertising would be significanlty cheaper than "legacy media".
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Facebook has probably realized that ads on their site don't help sell stuff. The real way to sell stuff on Facebook is to hire people to post there, and then pay them by the successful referral. That will quickly uncover the best methods for generating referrals.
$30 million isn't as much as it seems when taking into account operating costs, salaries, consultant fees, and other expenses.
I know of no young adults that don't want cars. They're just too poor to verbalize their desire.
There are ads on the internet? Who knew. Seriously, even people who don't use ad-blockers don't see the adverts. People have just conditioned themselves to not see them.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Facebooks's pricing has to reflect their ability to do targeted advertising, which is valuable to businesses selling niche products. But if you're selling mainstream products like cars or beer, then broadcasting the same message to everybody (or at least broader groups, e.g. TV show demographics) is probably more efficient.
I've almost never intentionally click on a FB ad since they are generally not relavant. Right now, my FB shows 6 online dating ads (even though I haven't been single for over 5 years), one ad from Wells Fargo asking me to help write a love letter to San Francisco (what!?) and one Marathon discount ad that might be relevant, but when I clicked on it, the site wanted my email address before it would even show me their site.
I use Google a lot (email and searches), and I typically click on one Google ad a day because their ads are typically quiet relevant to me. If a little creepy - I searched a Chevy Aveo mentioned in an earlier comment, and now my current Gmail ad is from Ford. Creepily relevant.
Just my two cents as a small business owner that has dabbled in all the online media options...spending money on social media is a waste, especially if you're a company that extends their reach beyond a single community. For local business owners, Facebook can be a great tool to send updates on events such as new interesting products, employee recognition, etc. Many customers like keeping in touch with their local business, whether it's a hardware store (like mine), restaurant, or other business that may hold special events of interest to the community. All that is free, and spending beyond that seems to be a waste of cash.
Making sure you are listed accurately on Google will cover 95% of your needs currently. Update the Place page, and if you sell products make sure you're uploading a data feed of your inventory. Both are free and generate tons of traffic to your website plus lots of in-store visits (if you have brick and mortar locations). Adwords is a waste of money IMHO...we won the Google/Amex video contest for Small Business Saturday and it included $5000 in Google adwords funds. I've burned through about $4000 in a month and a half and have seen negligible incremental business even with click-through rates in the 2% and higher range (and ad position average of 1.6). Sure, it's nice to know people are visiting our site, but plain old Google search still generates 95% of the traffic versus 2% from adwords.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Install AdBlock Plus. You won't miss the garbage.
I don't know of any that pay attention to ads on facebook however -- younger generations are just as good at screening out visual noise as I am and I am pretty good at it.
No, they can't afford cars because the gas prices keep going up so much.
Seems odd to me how corporations can file chapter 11 and a few years later still have millions to waste on shttiy advertising mediums.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Facebook is Write Only.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
They also need to tweak their advertising. Here's my pitch: "Imagine how much larger your penis will feel if you drive a Yukon!" "Pick up chicks that are half your age in a Corvette!" "Get between two different places in a Ford Fiesta! Sure it sucks, but it's all you can afford!"
They can't really blame Facebook for their marketing failure...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yes, a selected article from the daily mail the meets your bias. yes, how thoughtful you are. And by 'thoughtful' I mean 'wrong'.
http://www.kenburbary.com/2011/03/facebook-demographics-revisited-2011-statistics-2/
Did you even read you link? gosh, people between the age of 18 and 25 are insecure and narcissistic? wow, what a finding. Of course, it's not even the largest demographic on Facebook, and Facebook is larger then 1 Canadian college, and the tested 100 people.
So..nothing really.
in fact, the study was more focused on self presentation.
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2009.0257?journalCode=cyber
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Now you know one, I can afford a car and choose not to buy one, software developer and I bike to and from work
A lot of slashdot users and even internet users in general hate advertising bothering them.
Take a look at youtube. It plays an ad on nearly 90% of the videos I see, most of which are created by the owner without using any copyrighted material.
Facebook relies on your information to make money, hence it needs more users, but that growth is projected to be slow over the next two years.
Companies are now realizing how little return they are getting from advertising on FB.
Think about it... when was the last time you bought an item over $100 after clicking on an internet ad?
My elite math skills tell me they are spending $30 million dollars per year on Facebook, where none of that $30M can be accounted for by paid ads.
Until I get a clear understanding of that, I have to think that some kind of legendary incompetence is happening at GM, so I don't know if I get much out of their conclusions.
Assuming it costs $50k/year for GM to pay someone to upload pictures of their cars, type status updates ("Looking forward to tomorrow's release of car X!" or "OMFG car X is sooo beautiful and fast, I don't even care what it costs!") I can't help but imagine they're paying 600 people to do that kind of work.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
How can one know an anonymous coward?
I don't think I've ever seen a GM ad on Facebook. Looking at their page, they don't update very often, either. At least not compared to other companies with successful advertising campaigns on FB.
General Motors spends around $40 million per year on maintaining a Facebook profile and around a quarter of that goes into paid advertising.
So, that's 10 million into ads, where does the other 30 go?
If you're seriously paying some shmuck 30 million dollars a year to upkeep a facebook profile, fire him.
I'll do the job for only 5 million.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
The timing of this announcement causes me to think there is something else going on. Not that I disagree with the announcement. I think the 100:1 price to earnings ratio of Facebook's IPO is overly speculative and the ability to produce valuable targeted advertising from Facebook's massive database is yet to be seen. However I strongly doubt GM had no consideration for the timing and the impact it might have to the IPO. Surely FB would know about the announcement before it was released. And they could have offered money to delay the announcement. I just can't figure out what business objective GM would have for announcing it now.
I was advertising one of my ebooks with adwords and decided to try FB to see how it compared. Though the number of impressions was quite high, sales immediately tanked. As soon as I shut down the FB ad run and switched back to adwords, sales went right back up.
A lot probably depends on the product you're advertising. All I know is my target market wasn't on FB and that is apparently true for GM as well. I'm just glad I tested it before moving a bigger chunk of my advertising.
My sense is people go to FB to advertise what they're doing, not go shopping.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I don't think it's a problem with Facebook. I think it's a general issue of society being over-saturated with ads.
Take GM for example. They advertise on TV, radio, in magazines, in newspapers, and online through every venue available, including Facebook and YouTube. Everywhere you turn, you will see GM advertising.
People are burned out.
They don't care about supposedly "new" products that are more of the same with minor tweaks and new version numbers or names.
GM's real failure is not in their advertising, but in their products. With the sole exception of the Volt, every single vehicle they sell could be rubberstamped from a Ford, Chrysler, Honda, or other factory and the customer wouldn't know the difference if there was a GM logo on the front.
Welcome to the mainstream, GM. You're a commodity, indistinguishable from a horde of "me, too" vendors.
Please feel free to blow a few million more on another Superbowl ad that will garner you maybe a few thousand actual unit sales.
In the meantime, I will not share your YouTube videos on Facebook or "like" your page because I don't like advertising, and the only thing I get by "liking" a vendor's page is advertising posts thinly disguised as "information" that doesn't actually tell me anything useful. If you want me to shill, pay me. :P
Only a fool would astroturf for a vendor without compensation. You'd lose all your friends and get nothing in return.
And personally, the respect of friends and family is worth far more to me than you'd be willing to pay me to shill your crap.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This is something that has always bugged me about advertising: why do large corporations need to do it? For companies like GM, GE, Ford, Google, Microsoft, Johnson and Johnson, etc, they have a well-known brand that has been around for decades. Although there are people constantly entering and leaving the market, these companies have such an established position that their brand will always be circulated in discussions about products similar to the ones they make/sell. Rather than pushing their brand constantly, it would seem that the only things they'd really need to occasionally advertise are a product or nifty idea they've come up with.
To make a specific example, consider car sales in the US. With a few exceptions, the majority of sales are handled by a dealer who tries to ascertain the customer needs/wants and translate that into an available vehicle (ignoring any 'screw the customer' factors). It's socially established that there will always be a variety of cars at a dealer and that one can go in to find what they want, and they work with the dealer to meet their needs. From that perspective, it shouldn't make sense for go GM to spend millions on ads to random places pushing 'the car of the season', because there's an already established place to get that information. Instead, they should focus on promoting local car dealers with GM products, because that's what the populace would be interested in learning about. They might consider promoting a catalog/directory describing each car and feature or a general fund for independent car reviews if they're looking to target the people actively looking for car information; but they have an established market that will always be around until it's phased out by cultural and social changes.
Similarly, Microsoft can always expect people/companies to want on OS, J&J can expect a need for adhesive bandages, etc. And, they can expect people will actively seek these out, and that they are so commonly expected that advertising wouldn't do much to inform people of the existence of these products/services. If they can always rely on that, why bother advertising for those products and services?
Now, advertising makes a lot of sense for a small company trying to get its name out to the world or a company trying to sell a genuinely new or unexpected product, but for established markets and big companies it just doesn’t make sense to me why they'd even bother with advertising like Ads on Facebook.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
The only thing that seems certainly to work is that watching films with naked women in causes many men to want to have sex with them, but I'm not sure that this counts as "subtle product placement".
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
No, they can't afford cars because the gas prices keep going up so much.
They could buy a Volt, and then they won't have to worry about gas prices.
Take the millions spent in ads for vehicles and give that back to the consumer in prices and you'll do much better. Ads for products as expensive as cars are a waste of money.
"Hey, if you had tons of money, you can buy X and not have to worry about gas prices!"
If you could afford a volt you probably aren't worried about gas prices in the first place.
I'm offering to run their facebook page for 15 million. Ill delete spam, post new cars photos and links and answer peoples dumb questions. As for the ads, Ive never seen a GM ad but I also have ABP, so I rarely see any ads anywhere.
And GM's stated public partnership with Google, Google+ and Android has NOTHING to do with this. Right?
http://www.androidcentral.com/tags/gm
http://www.androidcentral.com/tags/chevrolet
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&sqi=2&ved=0CGoQtwIwCA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhcbTw_dvPgY&ei=SMOzT8vLDIWm8QSphN3uCA&usg=AFQjCNFiOVx-KhoOtBzmZAehYIC1nc2MmQ&sig2=h-EnMGtOVXB7ukBpBKPoig
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&sqi=2&ved=0CHEQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corvettenewsblog.com%2Ftag%2Fgm-and-android%2F&ei=SMOzT8vLDIWm8QSphN3uCA&usg=AFQjCNHVGF5QkdUkIzrKRroRwqLTbCQUkQ&sig2=dBPvLP-uWArg8lP5ANJWAw
Just another "Hmmmm" tinfoil hat thought for you. I wonder how much input the Feds have in GM making such an announcement just as Facebook is prepping for a IPO?
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/feds-freeze-gm-ceo-alan-akersons-salary-at-1-7-million-limit-other-top-exec-pay-in-the-process/
Gas is really cheap. For what my young male cousin is paying in monthly car insurance, despite having a clean record, he could fill up almost weekly and drive about one thousand miles per month, or about 30 miles per day, which is actually a hell of a lot of driving. Just for the cost of insurance alone.
Of course he also has to pay for the car itself, and maintenance and afford to pay for whatever it is he's driving to, unless he's just cruising or getting into trouble with friends ($20/person average movie cost, shopping, blah blah).
Gas is probably the cheapest cost of owning a car.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Maybe it's that they make a crappy product. Or that thinking americans won't support a company that ran itself into the ground, groveled for a handout that they'll never pay back and then lied about it on national tv.
Nevermind, my bad, there's not enough thinking american's left to make that kind of impact.
Was that TARP money?
It's fine for anything people get enthusiastic about and want to form social communities around. So bands, books, movies, various clubs, and other things that people form human attachments around are a good target for facebook. But a car even if you really love your car isn't the basis to form a relationship with someone else that might happen to have the same brand much less model of car.
Who knows the name of their mechanic let alone the name of the every guy in town with the same make of car? If you're a band then having a facebook page makes a lot of sense.
I'm sure there are car buying websites... sites that specialize in reviews for cars. That's where I'd put the money. If someone goes online to figure out which car to spend money on, they're likely going to wind up on one of those sites. Facebook is a waste of time for that sort of thing.
Every company from fabric softeners to mattress companies wants a facebook page. Utterly useless. Unless you're in a business that people form human attachments around don't waste your time with facebook.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
How worthwhile are any of these ads that seem to be the primary monetization of the Internet?
I never click on any of them, do you?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I was under the assumption that Facebook's cash flow wasn't driven by banner ads, but more by their massive customer profile database and the insidious reach of Facebook beyond their own website.
That being said, I think FB's IPO is insanely overvalued, but I don't buy tiger-deterrence rocks either.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
They could license the tune from "Get on my Horse" from Weebl and turn it into "This is our car, our car is amazing".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I don't know of any that pay attention to ads on facebook however -- younger generations are just as good at screening out visual noise as I am and I am pretty good at it.
Facebook has advertisements? Since when? ...hears a whisper...
Oh you mean there are actually people who still access Facebook on something other than a phone!?! And they don't have Adblock installed either!?!
Seriously. First thought I had at the headline...
WTF are the spending 30 MILLION dollars on maintaining a Facebook profile? Most people do it for nothing. Heck even if you hired one person, and that's all they did, all day (which is what some people seem to do anyway), and paid them say 50,000$ for the privilege, where does the rest of the money go?
At 50,000$ dollars salary, you could hire 600 people for 30,000,000$ to update your Facebook for you. 600! Its ludicrous.
I wouldn't say Facebook's global nature is the problem either. The fact that the majority of its users are outside the USA doesn't mean any fewer USA based users are viewing a given advertisement. I'm sure FB even allows targeting the ads to the extent where you can restrict them to only be viewable by people coming from particular countries. (I remember trying out a bit of FB advertising myself, for my on-site PC repair business, and I believe it even let me target the ads down to within so many miles of a specific zip code. Either that, or it was effectively doing something similar when I asked it to only display it to "local" users.)
I think GM is correct, that Facebook ads simply aren't a very effective way to sell new cars to people. Everyone I know who becomes interested in a new car purchase switches from a mode of ignoring all the advertising out there to paying a lot of attention. So that means, first of all, advertising really does very little to persuade someone to buy a car they didn't already decide they wanted. It's simply too big of a purchase for most of us (unless you're someone like Jay Leno, maybe!).
When a person decides they DO want a new vehicle (likely motivated by such things as expensive repairs they had to pay for on their existing one), they start doing some information gathering. For car enthusiasts, that might include reading all the available articles on the vehicles of the type/class they'd like in magazines like Car & Driver, or reading reviews on Consumer Reports or the Edmunds website. Others are influenced more by what they like, styling wise. (I know plenty of women who only get interested in cars they think look "cute". Then they narrow them down by tangibles like price, cargo space, seating, etc.)
Advertisers can actually market "cute". Look at the Kia Soul Hamster ads, for example. I guarantee you those sold a LOT of Souls. But Facebook ads don't really work well for that... You can't get in someone's face as they're watching something on TV, and "hook" them for 30 seconds. All you can do is pop up a link for them to optionally click on, with such a limited amount of info in the initial link or blurb, it can't convey an abstract like "This car is cute and fun!"
And because the Internet is more of an active experience, throwing ads in people's faces while they're trying to use it is a big negative ... much more so than TV commercials.
I use the free mobile app from my phone and tablet almost exclusively. I almost never use my computer to connect to facebook any more. They do not display any ads on the mobile apps. How many of their users are almost exclusively mobile and that is at least a percentage of your users that never get to see your ads.
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
General Motors spends around $40 million per year on maintaining a Facebook profile and around a quarter of that goes into paid advertising.
So $10 million for paid adverts and $30 million to maintain a Facebook profile for a year - seriously? WTF
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
i) Do I sell my GM shares for wasting so much money on this BS?
or
ii) Do I buy loads of FB shares because large corps will dump endless amounts of dough into FB?
or
iii) Weep at the stupidity of humanity?
The problem is, marketing works primarily to sustain itself.
Now that virtually all Americans shop at virtually identical stores (and websites) which stock virtually identical products, I agree that "brand awareness" is of diminishing value. The one exception might be in-store product placement. Otherwise, the money would be better spent on competitive pricing (people will buy anything that Walmart sells, but prefer the cheaper option).
I didn't even know Facebook had ads on their pages???
Then there is all the money wasted on advertising regarding matters of taste: I don't care how funny the Super Bowl Pepsi commercials are, it won't change my longstanding distaste for it (Cherry Coke for me, when I am in a "cola mood" - not often), and it does not make my wife drink more of it (she likes Diet Cherry Pepsi). I like Blue Moon Ale (except that Winter Abbey run this past winter - too hoppy, and did not buy it more than once), and have never seen an ad for it (love the Budweiser horses, but I ain't drinking *anything* of theirs...).
If I was a Pepsi or Coke investor, I would be bringing breach-of-fiduciary-responsibilities charges against their boards for allowing such ridiculously useless spending on high-budget advertising - keep your name out there once in a while to catch the eye of kids starting to spend their own food money (or immigrants who have never seen ads? Dunno if any part of the planet qualifies in that respect any more...), but I suspect that can be done for about 1% of current ad budgets.
For all the creativity expended on ads, I rarely remember what they were advertising, just that the general meme was funny - "cat herders" was so Dilertishly funny (true to lots of life situations with humans), but no idea any more what that ad was for.
I've seen a lot of the college acapella groups where folks have posted videos to YouTube, have you tried to record your groups singing and posted it to Facebook?
Facebook is a mature business. Everyone who is likely to sign up for Facebook already has. The growth period is over. Facebook traffic peaked in Q3 2011, and has been down a little or flat since then. Revenue for 2011 was $3.1 billion.
As a mature business, they get valued on revenue. Price/earnings ratios for Internet companies are in the 10-20 range. (MSFT is at 10, IBM at 15, GOOG at 18.) Using 15 as an optimistic value, Facebook is valued at about $46 billion.
Facebook's IPO values the company at $100 billion. That's more than twice that the company is worth. And the public stock doesn't have significant voting rights, which makes it less valuable.
Worst case, Facebook tries to grow revenue after the IPO by showing more ads to each user. Myspace tried that.
I am a young adult employed in a well-paying technical field and able to afford a new car quite easily. I don't want one.
From my experience with an iPhone iPad app Google performs far better than Facebook. Google ads are also 1/3 to 1/4 the cost.
Facebook has value in creating a social presence and in having a "conversation" with potential customers, but its ads have little value.
MyCleanPC should take up GM slot then!
At about $100 a day for my small service based business (with a pretty wide demographic), I saw ZERO conversions. I pulled the plug pretty quickly.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
I've done some analysis of Google vs Facebook ads with respect to an iPhone iPad app. I rotate between no ads, only google ads, only facebook ads, both google and facebook ads. I look at hits on the web page and at actual downloads. Google ads are somewhat effective. Facebook ads are ineffective and they cost 3 to 4 times as much.
Facebook can be useful for establishing a social presence and communicating with communicating with people, but I have serious doubt about its advertising. It has nice targeting by demographics but it just does not seem to perform.
Minus 25% for paid advertisement, they spend $30 million to maintain a single Facebook page?! I want that guy's job!
Bow before me, for I am root.
For the love of Turing, could you please shut up? I am so fed up with that song, now imagine hearing it every 10 minutes between your favorite shows!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I got an ad on Facebook to try Chrome while browsing Facebook using Chrome! If that's how well they "target" their ads I don't see how anyone will get good performance for their ads.
No, I'm sparticus!
Enough money in the bank to buy a more than one new car, in cash.
No car.
Yeah, that makes lots of sense to spend 40 millions on FB, when you don't know what to do with these 50 000 million dollars you got from Mr O'Bumma. Which Mr O'Bumma got from under his matress, of courze.
$40000000 per year to have a Facebook page? They have 378585 "likes" on Facebook, so at most that many people care about their Facebook page. That comes out to a whopping $105.65 per person annually. Yeah...
I am young, educated, well-paid, liberal enviromentalist.
I drive a (used) V8, 4.6 L Buick that gets 15 miles per gallon.
I walk to work, walk to stores, so that gallon of gas (15 miles), is about 2 weeks of driving for me.
I like to think that I did the world a service, to take this luxurious but gas-guzzling car off the market.
Am I deluding myself? Would it have been better to buy a brand new prius?
--ANON
Because they are as dumb as a bag of hammers.
Seriously. Can you even think of ONE decent car ad from GM in the last decade?
I sure can't, and the really, really, gut wrenching part of it all is that CHRYSLER has hit the ball out of the park with TWO stunning Superbowl ads over the last two years. And neither one were about their cars, but about their brand.
GM is unfocused because their "brand" is actually a number of brands, probably each one with their own ad agency, and each one with a different VP in charge of hiring ad agencies, so you can enevr get it under "one roof" so to speak.
GM is top-heavy with useless middle management, and each "brand" being -internally- in competition with each other. It's a problem, but the problem can be solved EASILY if the CEO had some balls and vision to make some sweeping changes to the way that GM does business.
But he won't because the CEO of GM is an empty suit collecting a massive payday, and he knows that even if he does nothing and GM fails miserably, the government will step in the bail out his incompetence, and he still gets a massive payday.
In short, GM is run by incompetent suits who are there to collect large checks and do as little as possible.
Corporate waste is immeasurable. $40 million blown on facebook ads? bah, that's nothing. They blow money like that all the time on things that don't work out. And then you wonder why you're paying $30,000 for a car built almost entirely of cheap plastic?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I'm 30 next month, so I'm not sure if I still fall into the 'young' demographic, but I've been able to afford a car for about 10 years and a nice car for about 5. I have no car, nor any strong desire for one, although I do own a house (well, technically, the bank owns about 30% of it still). I am more likely to buy a light aircraft than a car. For short distances, especially here, a bike is more convenient and cheaper, and a taxi when I need one is cheaper than maintaining an albatross, sorry, a car.
A car has just never seemed like a good economic proposition for me. If I'm going on a longer trip and I have spare money, I'd much rather buy a first-class rail ticket and have a comfy chair and a table that I can fit a laptop on. I can get some work done, watch a movie, or just sleep, depending on how I feel - none of these are possible if I'm driving.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This might be the first step in an avalanche of corporations stopping the flow of money to Facebook. Expect FB to try and recoup the losses by A) becoming a spam-house and/or B) charging users for the privilege.
There are advertisements on the internet? Really? Oh right, I have an adblocker installed.
Sorry, never mind.
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1) $ = 'what follows is money'
2) 40 million = 'how much money?'
3) dollars = 'specific type of money'
But someone should invent a symbol that combines 1 and 3 though.
$30 mil for the profile is a waste. Property who get to the profile were clicking on the ads.
It would have been nice if they'd announced this before the IPO.
someone didnt scratch someone else's back when they needed something.
Oh and if you are surfing the net without ad-block plus then you are wasting bandwidth for the rest of us.
I read an interview with former GM CEO Rick Wagoner, who first claimed that "if you are at GM for some years, you will become an auto guy". This man hat zero technology education - he was a finance guy. Then he was asked what he would do if union demands were too excessive. His reply was that his hands were basically tied and that he had to accept any demand. This man had absolutely zero fighting spirit on that subject. Was it his individual fault ? I don't think so. I guess the Unions were actually running the show in Detroit and he had to go along, or else.
Compare that to the CEO of Volkswagen (F. Piech), who has an aeronautical engineering degree (much harder than most other things, including hard science here) and who would at least let the unions strike for a week or two to test their nerves and then sit down and negotiate. If they were still mad, he would let them strike for some more weeks.
In Wolfsburg they even slashed working hours and pay when they had too many workers. "Worker Banks" of people doing exactly nothing are completely unheard of. People would be let go if the other options (such as time/pay reductions and "short working time" (partly state-paid)) would not work.
So UAW and $hit-counters drove the once biggest auto corp into the ground. Mr Piech could not have weaker enemies than beancounters like Mr Wagoner. And certainly the current beancounter is no match for VW engineering talent either:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_F._Akerson
That's looking at the small picture.
Looking at the bigger picture means taking in all the aspects of owning a car + gas.
The cost of maintaining a car has not increased 50%.
Gas prices have.
For families who were spending once 200-300$ in gas are now paying 300-450 in gas per month
3600 per year now is 5400.
If you don't think that's a lot of money, I'd be more than happy to have you give that to me.
I spend maybe 120ish per month right now in gas with minimal driving excluding going to work. (Which I need a car to get to)
It used to be 80. It adds up fast for low-middle class people.
Also my car is really light on gas usage.
It took you 40 MILLION DOLLARS to come to the conclusion that, Facebook, is not "working". You're officially the stupidest marketing expert alive.
They have every incentive to be able to understand whether and how their advertising works, and publicize its success. That they haven't done so (or at least publicized the results) suggests that they don't want to know the answer, or don't want others to know.
Sample of some European car ads that I've seen in my day:
Couple are driving through town in a small Italian car. Guy keeps checking out chicks, she gets pissed, and eventually pulls over and makes out with a random guy. Lesson learned.
Angry woman storms out of a house throwing away various clothing items, pieces of jewelry, and other reminders of what we assume is her ex. She's about to ditch the car keys into the drain, but hesitates, changes her demeanor, becomes more determined, and proudly marches to her little German car and drives off to the tune of more upbeat music.
Girl walks up to a guy and says "nice car, wanna show me what it can do?" She gets in with him and they go for a drive. She sinks into the comfortable seats, hangs on to the nice door handles and they zip along through the country while she gets all hot and worked up. They end up in his house, running upstairs, throwing down and ready to do it when they hear the door closing. They panic, look around like they're about to be busted, and two kids come running in greeting them as mom and dad.
Sample of US car commercials:
Unseen driver in a silver vehicle drives at unsafe speeds on a country road with no traffic to the tune of loud rock music, and at the end there's a picture of the car and a marketing guy reading out some catchy sales slogan.
Unseen driver in a silver vehicle drives at unsafe speeds on a city street with no traffic to the tune of loud rock music, and at the end there's a picture of the car and a marketing guy reading out some catchy sales slogan.
Unseen driver in a silver vehicle drives at unsafe speeds on a city street where the traffic all moves at the speed of light, to the tune of loud rock music, and at the end there's a picture of the car and a marketing guy reading out some catchy sales slogan.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I saw something on here: https://xkcd.com/980/
That said Coke could buy everyone in the world a coke with their advertising budget. That's a lot of cokes!
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
It's not working because people haven't forgotten that the united auto workers union was bailed out by the taxpayer dollars.
I'm in the market for a new car, and like the car commercial that embarrassed the current administration, if I buy American, it will be Ford, for the same reason.
Also never wanted one here either and hoping I can get through life without ever having to own one. As I am about halfway through said life now the chances are starting to look pretty good. Promoting personal transportation vehicles as a way of life seems really stupid to me on just about every level and I'd rather continue to avoid supporting it if I can.
You would probably be a hero if you wrote up an article with graphs of your data. Obviously not submitting the story to slashdot until a week after other sites though.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Are you telling me they don't subdivise their advertising by region or even country ? What the heck ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Cars and Facebook in the same string .... now, if we can just bring in Linux somehow... throw in a dash of conspiracy theory ...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Shocking! :D Seriously though, anyone who thinks Facebook is any different from Compuserve, Geocities, Myspace, or any of the other long line of online social interaction thingamajigs that rise and decline as they are replaced by something else is going to be disappointed in the performance of their portfolio.
They said a quarter of the $40 million goes into advertising. That's $10 million. The other $30 million is used for what exactly?
Coming up with silly graphics of cars and posting them?
Big companies are consistently treating the little guy like dirt. Over the course of a lifetime, a person has probably owned at least one lemon made by GM. They didn't like the experience, and over time, their reputation gets out.
Advertising undoes that. If you repeat the same lie often enough, people will start to believe it's true. Like those truck ads with the trucks driving off road. People see those and think that *that* particular brand of truck is durable. They'll even throw a concrete block in the back on the commercials, so it must be tough! Look, it's a dirty truck so it must be good for working.
But naturally, if you let the dealer know you've done that with your truck, they'll call it abuse and void the warranty. You aren't actually supposed to do that with your truck - that's just the commercial, you see.
Funny thing is, though, that having worked in a shop I know the strengths and weaknesses of most designs. Some trucks have a better suspension which will put up with continuous off-road driving, while others would be lucky to have their engine survive 100,000 miles.
Guess which truck has the worst suspension design?
Advertising is there to undo the knowledge that comes from experience. If a publicly owned, American company could think beyond next quarter - that is, long term, they wouldn't need advertising or government bailouts.
THIS
This has always been my view of it. Facebook is so much more palatable when viewed through a phone. Facebook without the ads is pretty good. I think they will eventually have to go the Twitter route, where they place ads directly into the feed. There will probably be ways to filter those, but definitely not on the official Facebook app.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
You call the NSA.
Yeah,as if GM's 1960's magazine ads weren't successful because not enough people clicked on them. It's the exposure. If Facebook doesn't get them enough of that, maybe they need to try the free Shopper mailbox stuffers.
The company I work for tried using Facebook Ads. We tried changing all the demographics, the time of day, day of week and everything else we could think of but at best we broke even on sales and no longer advertise on Facebook. Google, on the other hand is a constant profit center. I don't think we've tried Bing or yahoo.
Advertising in general is a waste of money if the product you're selling just tumbled out of my rectum this morning. I haven't seen an exciting new GM product in years.