General Motors Back to Facebook Ads with a Mobile Campaign

General Motors (NYSE:GM) is returning to the use of Facebook for marketing purposes – a year after the car maker said it would quit running advertising messages on the world’s largest social-networking service, Bloomberg reported on April 10. Encouraged perhaps by Facebook Inc.’s (NASDAQ:FB) efforts to improve the social network’s ability to display ads, the American automotive company plans to run test ads promoting the Chevrolet Sonic subcompact car on Facebook’s mobile applications and website.

**Good News**
The return of General Motors as an advertising customer on the world’s largest social network is good news for Facebook, whose revenue comes primarily from selling ads. The California-based tech company introduced some significant changes in recent months to improve its ad-displaying capabilities and consequently boost ad revenue. A particular focus of these efforts has been the improvement of the capability to display advertisements on mobile devices, since in 2012 – for the first time – more people used the social network service on smartphones and tablets than on desktops.

By the fourth quarter of last year, mobile generated 23 percent of Facebook’s advertising revenue, up from 14 percent in the previous quarter. However, Facebook is trailing behind Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in that respect, as the US search giant is projected to grab 57 percent of the U.S. market for mobile advertising in 2015, Bloomberg noted, citing projections by researcher EMarketer Inc.

!m[The Automotive Giant Will Run Test Ads on Facebook’s Mobile Applications ](/uploads/story/1852/thumbs/pic1_inline.png)
“It shows one thing: Nobody can really ignore Facebook,” opined Thilo Koslowski, an auto industry analyst with Gartner Inc. “GM realizes there must be a value proposition for them to go to Facebook.”
Facebook’s spokesman Adam Isserlis welcomed the return of General Motors. “We’ve had an ongoing dialogue with GM over the last twelve months and are pleased to have them back as an advertiser on Facebook,” Bloomberg quoted Isserlis as saying.

General Motors was a major advertiser on Facebook in 2011, spending $10 million on paid Facebook ads that year.
According to the US Chevrolet marketing vice president Chris Perry, the marketing campaign for Chevrolet Sonic is “an industry-first ‘mobile-only’ pilot campaign” that aims to utilise the “newly available targeting and measurement capabilities on Facebook”.
**Facebook’s share price was $26.59 as of 8.52 GMT, 10.04.2013**
**The General Motors share price was $27.53 as of 8.52 GMT, 10.04.2013**