Less than two months after General Motors stopped buying Facebook ads and seemingly blemished the digital giant’s IPO, executives from the two sides are talking again.
First reported by The Wall Street Journal this morning, a GM spokesperson confirmed that the brand’s global marketing chief Joel Ewanick and Facebook’s global head of sales Carolyn Everson met at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in France two weeks ago. GM executive chief Daniel Akerson and Facebook marketing chief Sheryl Sandberg have since held discussions, while other parties from the company have also talked, the spokesperson from the automaker confirmed. The objective of the meetings has been to potentially rekindle their advertiser-publisher relationship.
Whether GM reopens its Facebook account remains to be seen. But given Facebook's audience of 900 million users worldwide, it’s fairly predictable that the Detroit company is at least entertaining the idea.
According to reports, GM spent $10 million on Facebook ads last year. But the automaker somewhat controversially told The Journal on May 16, two days before Facebook’s IPO, that ads on the social site were ineffective, leading to an industry-wide debate over the effectiveness of social advertising. Advertising is easily Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook’s main revenue stream.
Facebook declined to comment for this story.