<story><title>GM Says Facebook Ads Don&apos;t Work, Pulls $10 Million Account</title><url>http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/05/15/gm-says-facebook-ads-dont-work-pulls-10-billion-account/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>I&apos;ve said this repeatedly: Facebook is a high-risk proposition, particularly as an investment (disclaimer: I work for Google). &quot;Intent&quot; as other commenters have noted is a big part of the story but it&apos;s not the only story.&lt;p&gt;Search can broadly be broken up into at least two categories:&lt;p&gt;1. Navigational eg typing &quot;b and h&quot; into the browser; and&lt;p&gt;2. Informational eg &quot;cheap flights to jamaica&quot;.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t know what the make up is of (1) vs (2) but I expect for normal users (1) is pretty huge. I would guess that ads are have lower clickthroughs for (1) than (2).&lt;p&gt;(2) is where you have the intent. The user obviously wants something. They may find it with an ad. They may find it with organic search results. Either way, the goal with search is to get the user the best result.&lt;p&gt;With Facebook you tend to be just looking at friends&apos; updates, posting your own updates, posting photos and the like. You don&apos;t go to Facebook to find things. So it doesn&apos;t really matter how much targeting information Facebook has if you don&apos;t have that intent.&lt;p&gt;Many will say &quot;but what if you do start going to Facebook to find things&quot;. That&apos;s a &lt;i&gt;massive&lt;/i&gt; &quot;what if&quot;. What if the Sun expands tomorrow and swallows the Earth?&lt;p&gt;Facebook has (IMHO) a number of strategic problems:&lt;p&gt;1. It has no control over mobile. Both Google and Apple have mobile OSs;&lt;p&gt;2. It has no search engine (which is how it could monetize its user information); and&lt;p&gt;3. Users of community-driven sites are notoriously fickle. There is &lt;i&gt;nothing&lt;/i&gt; preventing Facebook from being the next Myspace when something newer, cooler and hipper comes along and the users move on.&lt;p&gt;Early founders, employees and investors have obviously done &lt;i&gt;spectacularly&lt;/i&gt; well and there&apos;s a lot that Facebook has done right (all the more surprising considering the length of time and the age of Zuckerberg). It&apos;s also created an engineering environment that attracts and maintains top talent (although we&apos;ll see if that last once the stock plateaus, which is simply a matter of time). But would I be buying in the IPO? Not a chance in hell.&lt;p&gt;This isn&apos;t about predicting imminent doom. Facebook will be around for years to come. It&apos;s about the upside reward vs the downside risk. Facebook somehow is still considered a &quot;growth&quot; company and values as such (with extraordinary P/Es). This will at some point change (as it did for Google some ~5 years ago).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>steve8918</author><text>You make it sound like search is the be all and end all reason why people use the Internet.  It&apos;s not.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s obvious that a Google employee would believe this, and believe me, I think Google ads are amazingly effective when used with Google search.  I&apos;ve just started using Adwords and it&apos;s great.&lt;p&gt;But Facebook is entirely different from Google search, and there is no reason why their monetization techniques need to be the same way that Google monetizes their users.&lt;p&gt;Facebook is more akin to TV in that people use it to browse content based on what their friends are doing.  They aren&apos;t searching for things, they are browsing, which is different.  So Google search and the techniques you use to monetize your users are completely orthogonal to how Facebook should monetize their users.&lt;p&gt;Facebook is more akin to a TV station, and if I had to make a choice, I would go for things like &quot;sponsoring&quot; of ads or items in the newsfeed.  And the way Facebook could analyze the users is completely different.  You could probably do an analysis on the types of articles or links that a user it clicking on, and then sponsoring items in the user&apos;s newsfeed that they might be interested in.  &quot;This news article was brought to you by the Ford Fusion&quot; or &quot;Your friend Janet went to Jamaica, there&apos;s a flight leaving for Mexico next Friday for $500 for 4 days, all inclusive, brought to you by Travelocity&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Right now, they are making something like $4/user/year in revenues, based on really terribly performing ads.  I know this personally because I tried using it and it was terrible, even worse than Bing ad CTRs.  In order to get to GOOG&apos;s revenues, they&apos;ll need to bring that up to $40/user/year.  Depending on the growth rate, that would make FB worth even more than GOOG, so I don&apos;t think it&apos;s necessarily a bad investment at all.  It all depends on how effectively and how quickly they can ramp up the monetization of their users.</text></comment>
<story><title>GM Says Facebook Ads Don&apos;t Work, Pulls $10 Million Account</title><url>http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/05/15/gm-says-facebook-ads-dont-work-pulls-10-billion-account/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>I&apos;ve said this repeatedly: Facebook is a high-risk proposition, particularly as an investment (disclaimer: I work for Google). &quot;Intent&quot; as other commenters have noted is a big part of the story but it&apos;s not the only story.&lt;p&gt;Search can broadly be broken up into at least two categories:&lt;p&gt;1. Navigational eg typing &quot;b and h&quot; into the browser; and&lt;p&gt;2. Informational eg &quot;cheap flights to jamaica&quot;.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t know what the make up is of (1) vs (2) but I expect for normal users (1) is pretty huge. I would guess that ads are have lower clickthroughs for (1) than (2).&lt;p&gt;(2) is where you have the intent. The user obviously wants something. They may find it with an ad. They may find it with organic search results. Either way, the goal with search is to get the user the best result.&lt;p&gt;With Facebook you tend to be just looking at friends&apos; updates, posting your own updates, posting photos and the like. You don&apos;t go to Facebook to find things. So it doesn&apos;t really matter how much targeting information Facebook has if you don&apos;t have that intent.&lt;p&gt;Many will say &quot;but what if you do start going to Facebook to find things&quot;. That&apos;s a &lt;i&gt;massive&lt;/i&gt; &quot;what if&quot;. What if the Sun expands tomorrow and swallows the Earth?&lt;p&gt;Facebook has (IMHO) a number of strategic problems:&lt;p&gt;1. It has no control over mobile. Both Google and Apple have mobile OSs;&lt;p&gt;2. It has no search engine (which is how it could monetize its user information); and&lt;p&gt;3. Users of community-driven sites are notoriously fickle. There is &lt;i&gt;nothing&lt;/i&gt; preventing Facebook from being the next Myspace when something newer, cooler and hipper comes along and the users move on.&lt;p&gt;Early founders, employees and investors have obviously done &lt;i&gt;spectacularly&lt;/i&gt; well and there&apos;s a lot that Facebook has done right (all the more surprising considering the length of time and the age of Zuckerberg). It&apos;s also created an engineering environment that attracts and maintains top talent (although we&apos;ll see if that last once the stock plateaus, which is simply a matter of time). But would I be buying in the IPO? Not a chance in hell.&lt;p&gt;This isn&apos;t about predicting imminent doom. Facebook will be around for years to come. It&apos;s about the upside reward vs the downside risk. Facebook somehow is still considered a &quot;growth&quot; company and values as such (with extraordinary P/Es). This will at some point change (as it did for Google some ~5 years ago).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>webwright</author><text>&quot;I&apos;ve said this repeatedly: Facebook is a high-risk proposition, particularly as an investment (disclaimer: I work for Google). &quot;Intent&quot; as other commenters have noted is a big part of the story but it&apos;s not the only story.&quot;&lt;p&gt;As a Google employee, what do you think of Google as an investment?  If you look forward 5+ years, everyone is doing much of their internetting via their phone (certainly some or all of that will be web vs. apps-- who knows?).  Google gains some extra data with searches, like location.  So &quot;pizza&quot; searches get a LOT more targeted.  But many searches do not.&lt;p&gt;The rub is that Google has near-zero ad inventory on mobile.  You can&apos;t show 6 adwords ads, you can show 1.  Additionally, consumer&apos;s bar for tapping an ad is MUCH higher (given the relative speeds of mobile browsing).  As searching moves mobile, how does Google&apos;s revenue shake out?</text></comment>