GM returns to advertising on Facebook

General Motors made headlines last year with  its decision to stop advertising on Facebook due to a lack of results. This year however, the automaker is back as a Facebook advertiser with a campaign promoting the Chevrolet Sonic.

The social network wants to dispel the perception that it was not an effective platform for selling cars.

Facebook yesterday released research showing that automotive campaigns on the social networking site led more people to consider the brands and models advertised, while also pushing down consideration of competitors.

In the custom study conducted by comScore and commissioned by Facebook, five major auto campaigns on Facebook between May and August 2013 were analysed. 

With a comparison of a test and control group, the study sought to analyse how the campaigns drove incremental lift in vehicle consideration in terms of site visits and search activity.

The analysis showed that visits to the auto brand sites rose 37 per cent and page views 38 per cent among those who saw the ads that ran across desktop and mobile.

Model page visits and page views were up 50 per cent and 46 per cent, respectively. Also brand page visits from auto-focused sites were up 17 per cent, while brand search activity increased 11 per cent. Conversely, competitive brand and model searches were down 3 per cent and 14 per cent respectively.

The social network did not disclose the specific brands or models involved in the study.

According to a blog post by Kass Dawson, head of automotive strategy at Facebook, the study "shines a spotlight on how Facebook influences mid-funnel behaviour and demonstrates that automotive ads on Facebook make your overall campaigns work harder."

Dawson said automakers and dealerships could leverage Facebook to reach the audiences that mattered to them on the massive social network, that had 1.19 billion users. He added, marketers could target the exact people most likely to respond to their messaging.

He said, with digital advertising, there was no "prime time" to reach audiences as prime time was all the time.

The Action Lift study found that brand website visits were up 37 per cent during the campaigns, with search traffic on engines such as Google and Yahoo rising 11 per cent,  while visits to the brand Facebook pages increased 50 per cent.