MAM
GM plans to pull the plug on paid ads on Facebook
MUMBAI: Leading global automobile manufacturer General Motors plans to stop advertising with social networking website Facebook. The company feels that paid ads on the site have little impact on consumers‘ car purchases.
GM is the third-biggest advertiser across all media in the U.S, after Procter & Gamble and AT&T.
GM spends about $30 million on content created for the site which includes agencies that manage the content and daily maintenance of GM‘s pages. The automobile giant began re-evaluating its Facebook strategy earlier this year after its marketing team began to question the effectiveness of the ad. Grapevine also has it that GM has been revamping its marketing, hiring a new ad firm to buy its media.
The move brings to light a much debated issue that many marketers have been raising: whether ads on Facebook help them sell more products. While GM plans to withdraw the paid ads, it intends to continue maintaining the free Facebook pages and promote its products on Facebook.
This move by GM also raises questions about Facebook’s ability to sustain the 88 per cent revenue growth achieved in 2011. Facebook said last month its first-quarter ad revenue was down 7.5 per cent from the previous three months and blamed ‘seasonal trends’ for the decline, as well as a greater number of users from outside the U.S., where ad rates are lower.
GM spent around $10 million (5.55 per cent) of its total ad spends in the US viz. $1.8 billion in 2011 , according to Kantar Media. This constitutes Facebook‘s 2.70 per cent of Facebook’s total 2011 revenue of $3.7 billion, most of which was advertising sales.
AD Agencies
WPP Media elevates Dipti Gulati to vp, client growth for APMEA
Singapore-based executive to commercialise AI-powered solutions business across the region
SINGAPORE: WPP Media has promoted Dipti Gulati to vice president, client growth, handing her the mandate to lead the commercialisation of its solutions business across APMEA.
Based in Singapore, Gulati steps up after serving as senior director, client growth, where she drove expansion across APAC spanning programmatic, search, social, CTV, DOOH and cross-channel offerings. Now, she is tasked with translating advanced AI, data and technology ecosystems into scalable growth strategies for global brands across FMCG, luxury, F&B and financial services.
“I commercialise the future of media — at scale, across APMEA,” Gulati said, announcing her appointment. She added that she turns advanced data, AI and technology ecosystems into real commercial outcomes, shifting the conversation “from a pure media play to owning business outcomes”.
Her brief is unapologetically future-facing: addressable, accountable and AI-powered media. She will work with cross-market teams across APMEA, bringing together diverse perspectives and cultures to accelerate growth and build what she calls the “future of media”.
Gulati’s rise caps nearly two years at WPP Media and follows a six-month stint as regional director of growth, APAC, at Mindshare, where she led new business development and expanded capabilities for existing clients. Earlier, as global account director for integrated marketing communications on the Unilever business, she drove communications strategy for multi-million dollar beauty and wellbeing brands across Southeast Asia.
Before that, Gulati spent close to two years as associate director at Warner Bros. Discovery in Singapore. She also served as director, strategic partnerships and market development at TrustSphere, leading go-to-market and growth initiatives across Asia and evangelising relationship analytics to C-level executives. TrustSphere, credited by industry and Harvard Business School case studies as a pioneer in relationship analytics, became a springboard for her deeper engagement with data-driven growth.
Her board and evangelist roles at the Asia Cloud Computing Association and its Asia Analytics Alliance further sharpened her regional policy and analytics credentials. Earlier chapters include marketing consultancy at Blockchain Foundry and a seven-year run at Warner Bros. Discovery in India, where she led ad-sales and business development for HBO and WB across north and east India, delivering record billings. She began her career at Diligent Media Corporation Ltd and Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd..
From ad-sales floors in Delhi and Mumbai to boardrooms in Singapore, Gulati’s arc mirrors the industry’s own shift — from selling spots and slots to engineering outcomes through data and AI. At WPP Media, the brief is clear: scale smarter, move faster and turn algorithms into advantage.
