Social Networking Security or Lack of When Promoting Your Brand

When discussing advertising on social networking, it is hard to miss the saga of General Motors pulling their advertising account from Facebook, just a few days before the big Facebook Initial Public Offering (IPO), then returning to Facebook after one year absent. If we think social media is good place to promote brand, then why GM withdrew their advertising? In May of 2012, General Motors announced that they would stop advertising on Facebook, claiming that it was ineffective to selling their cars.  The announcement caused a big stir in the media and caused a lot of speculation about whether advertising on Facebook is effective.  This was a big problem for Facebook as it gets most of its income from advertising.  A few days after the GM's announcement, Facebook IPO went off as a big disappointment.  The stock price dropped almost 30% at the close of its first week on the stock market.  There were a numbers of issues that analysts claim were the reason for the disappointing IPO, but could the move by GM also contributed to the disappointing IPO?

                                                       Picture from Forbes.com

In April of 2013, General Motors announced that they would return to advertise on Facebook.  They stated that they want to do an all-mobile advertising campaign for their new Chevrolet Sonic car.  Some analyst suspect that the reason GM pulled their ads in the first place was because of the lack of tracking by Facebook on how effective the advertisement on Facebook is. They were not worry about the social networking security or lack of when promoting their brand. Then at their returning to Facebook, GM tried to leverage their account to get Facebook to do more to track the effectiveness of the ads. However, other car companies stay with Facebook because they think Facebook reached many people, so they might think there is no need to concern about the effectiveness of advertisement. 

Furthermore, if a social media outlet set itself up as a medium for advertising, it needs to show its customers (the companies that will buy space to advertise) that it is effective, that it can track progresses, etc.  Just like how TV is selling time slot to companies for advertising.  For a time during a show with few viewers, the cost of that time slot is less than a time slot during a show that a lot of people watch, like the Super Bowl.  Even with advertising on a billboard by the side of the road, the ones on a road that has a lot of traffic will reach more people, whereas the billboard on some empty street will not be seen by many people.  Seems like with advertising on a social media like Facebook, the customers pay for a billboard, then Facebook decides where to put that billboard, it could be on a very busy traffic street or it is out in the country side somewhere.

In conclusion, when promoting your brand, there is no need to worry much about the social networking security. It is rather to focus on how social media promotes your brand and if it is effective.