GM has confirmed to Ad Age that they have decided to once again throw some advertising dollars into Facebook.

“Chevrolet is testing a number of mobile-advertising solutions, including Facebook, as part of its ‘Find New Roads’ campaign,” said Chris Perry, VP Chevrolet marketing in the U.S. “Today, Chevrolet is launching an industry-first, ‘mobile-only’ pilot campaign for the Chevrolet Sonic that utilizes newly available targeting and measurement capabilities on Facebook.”

Big news for GM, sure. But why is this big news for Facebook? Let’s take a brief walk through Facebook and GM’a relationship over the past year.

In May of 2012, just days before Facebook’s IPO, GM announced that they would be pulling all of their Facebook ads. They stated that they simply weren’t convinced that Facebook ads were truly effective, and furthermore were unsure how they fit into their future marketing strategies. It was a high-profile move, at a time when Facebook’s ability to monetize was on everyone’s mind.

Immediately, it felt like a pretty big slap to the face. A public vote of no confidence. A few days later, GM noted that they were making many big advertising decisions at the time. Basically, hey – no hard feelings. It’s all just part of a comprehensive retooling of the strategy. Of course, this did little to neutralize the sting, especially right around the IPO. Facebook’s stock price tanked, people started talking monetization issues, which led to talks about advertising strategies, which of course led to GM as the big example of a company who pulled the plug.

A couple of months later, GM’s marketing head Joel Ewanick resigned – although it wasn’t really tied to the Facebook, specifically.

Since then, multiple reports have suggested that Facebook and GM had reestablished talks. The most recent indicating that the two companies were “actively talking” about a return to a paid advertising partnership.

“We’re still actively talking to them and looking at opportunities that come our way…I wouldn’t tell you that there’s a Mexican standoff here. We just didn’t see the value [in the ads],” said GM’s interim marketing head Alan Batey back in January.

Ad Age says that part of the reason GM pulled out of Facebook in the first place involved the inability for the company to run bigger, “higher-impact” ads. Although that’s still not really possible, Facebook advertising has changed quite a bit in the last year – mainly with the launch of the real-time, cookie-based Facebook Exchange retargeting system.

“We’ve had an ongoing dialogue with GM over the last 12 months and are pleased to have them back as an advertiser on Facebook. We look forward to working even more closely with GM in the coming weeks and months,” said a Facebook spokesperson.

Any way you look at it, it’s a good thing for Facebook that GM has decided to try it again. There’s a chance that it could signify to other companies that it’s safe to open up their Facebook ad budgets a little bit. In the end, we’re not talking about a huge ad budget here that’s going to make or break either Facebook or GM. Before GM yanked their ads last May, it was reported that they had only been spending around $10 million on Facebook ads – hardly a game changer.

[Image via Chevrolet.com]

Facebook and General Motors are still “actively talking” about a return to paid advertising on the site, according to a report from Reuters. Here’s a quote from GM’s interim marketing head Alan Batey:

“We’re still actively talking to them and looking at opportunities that come our way…I wouldn’t tell you that there’s a Mexican standoff here. We just didn’t see the value [in the ads].”

Alan Batey steeped in to replace Joel Ewanick, the former GM marketing chief who resigned back in July, barely two months after pulling the Facebook ads. Forbes reported that he was actually being removed for “failing to properly vet the financial details of a European soccer sponsorship deal.”

In the time since General Motors publicly yanked all of their paid advertising on Facebook, plenty of companies have decided to spend a significant amount of money on Facebook advertising. Plenty of companies have also made the decision to lessen their Facebook ad budget.

But we keep talking about General Motors and Facebook. Why? Because their breakup was just so juicy. You remember, right? Just days before the big Facebook IPO, GM announced that they were pulling all of their Facebook ads. They said that they weren’t sure about their effectiveness and how they fit into future marketing strategies. Of course, to the average reader that simply sounds like a bunch of jargon for “Facebook ads aren’t worth our time or money.”

Sure, a few days later GM said that they were making big advertising decisions across the board. No hard feelings, Facebook. It’s just part of a bigger strategy, and a coincidence that it happened three days before the IPO. But the fact that it may have been a more innocuous move than previously thought didn’t do much to neutralize the sting of it all. And as Facebook’s stock price tanked out of the gate, people began to discuss monetization issues, and of course that led to talks about advertising strategies, which of course led to GM as the big example of a company who pulled the plug.

Just a few weeks after all of this went down, reports emerged that Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg had talked to GM CEO Daniel Akerson about the car company reigniting the Facebook flame. Also, Facebook global sales head Carolyn Everson was said to have been preparing “better data on how their ads can turn into dollars.”

So it appears that Facebook and GM are, and probably have been in discussions for some time. And that will continue. GM was reported to have only really been spending $10M in actual ad spend on the network, but for Facebook, getting GM back on board could signify to other companies that it’s safe to open up their Facebook ad budgets – if just a little more.

Joel Ewanick, GM’s marketing chief, has resigned his position effective immediately. The 52-year-old worked with GM for two years, and had only been CMO since December 2010.

A few days before Facebook went public, GM rather publicly pulled all of their paid ads from Facebook, basically saying that Facebook advertising doesn’t work. “GM is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important,” said Ewanick. Although it seemed like a giant slap in the face to Facebook right before their IPO, we learned that Ewanick wasn’t singling out the social network. In fact, he had also chosen to forgo the Super Bowl in 2013.

So, Ewanick was making big moves, but it doesn’t appear that they payed off. According to those familiar with the matter, it wasn’t the Facebook deal that led to his departure, however.

“[H]e was being removed for failing to properly vet the financial details of a European soccer sponsorship deal that he struck recently,” according to Forbes.

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GM has said that Alan Batey, current VP of U.S. and service, will be the interim Marketing Chief.

According to anonymous sources close to the deal, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is currently in talks with Chief Executive Officer Dan Akerson about restarting GM’s campaign. These nameless individuals have also stated that the one key element crucial to sealing the deal is, of course, a proper return on investment.

Business Insider is reporting that one of the other factors luring General Motors back onto Facebook is the use of third-party data to target users and their interests. Until now, the company had prevented its advertisers from using such information to properly adjust their campaigns. Now, it would seem, Facebook is having a change of heart.

In 2011, General Motors spent an estimated $1.8 billion on advertising, $10 million of which apparently went to Facebook’s bank account. However, after pouring over advertising data, the company has decided they would like to cut such expenses by $2 billion over the next five years. In an effort to get these ventures under control, GM will temper their campaign by opting out of such expensive events as the Super Bowl. Instead, the company will explore cheaper options, says General Motors chief marketing officer Joel Ewanick.

Since none of this has been officially confirmed with either General Motors or Facebook, both companies have refused to comment on the situation as of this writing.

Read: Facebook ads don’t really work and we’re getting the hell out.

That’s the takeaway that many took from the move, and it promoted an intensification of a long-standing conversation about Facebook’s monetization strategy.

A few days later, we learned that the big ad pull may have been a more innocuous than previously thought. We learned that GM was making big advertising decisions apart from how they marketed on Facebook (like sitting out the Super Bowl next year). We also heard that Facebook even encouraged GM to utilize the free promotion that comes from promoting a page and content on their site.

No hard feelings, then. Right? GM insisted that the big pull right before the IPO was purely coincidental. A Ford exec tweeted that Facebook ads were effective, and it’s actually just about content, innovation, and execution. Amidst the arguing over the efficacy of Facebook ads, Facebook itself was suffering a pretty rotten couple of weeks on the market and thinking about new strategies to marketing their platform as a premier place to buy ad space.

A day before the IPO a marketing analyst for Gartner told us that, “Facebook very frequently updates its formats and releases new products, so it will have another chance to pitch to GM.”

And according to The Wall Street Journal, that’s exactly what’s happening right now. They say that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has spoken to GM CEO Daniel Akerson about the automaker coming back to big blue.

Also, from the WSJ:

[GM Global Marketing Chief Joel] Ewanick and Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s global sales head, met for the first time since the blowup at a June event in Cannes, France, a person familiar with the meeting said. Ms. Everson said Facebook is willing to provide GM with better data on how their ads can turn into dollars, as it has agreed to do with other advertisers, this person said. Facebook won’t provide any special treatment for GM, however.

Sources said that GM is waiting for Facebook to prove its effectiveness.

In the end, the $10 million the GM spent on Facebook advertising was minuscule – both to GM and Facebook, really. But, as a vote of confidence in the ability of Facebook ads to be effective, GM’s return would be good news for Facebook.

Among those awesome new features were improvements to Siri, and the addition of turn-by-turn navigation to the Maps app. As part of that, Apple announced that Siri would be getting an “eyes free” mode. That is, a button on the steering wheel of your car would activate Siri, allowing you to give commands (including navigation requests) without ever taking your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road.

As part of the announcement, Apple said that they had been working with a number of auto manufacturers who were on board and would be bringing eyes free Siri integration to their vehicles soon. They flashed the logos of nine auto makers on the screen, including GM, BMW, Toyota, and Chrysler. Ford, which already has similar technology in place with its SYNC system, was conspicuously absent from the list.

The question, of course, was which of these auto makers would get Eyes Free-capable vehicles rolling off their assembly lines first. The answer, it seems, is GM. According to GM Authority, GM is prepping two models that will have Eyes Free integration: the Chevy Spark and the Chevy Sonic. The timing of the rollout is unclear, but the report suggests that there will be an announcement sometime within the next year. That suggests that we won’t be seeing Eyes Free in the 2013 models of either vehicle, though the 2014 model seems pretty certain.

It is not yet known when any of the other car makers will be rolling out Eyes Free integration in their vehicles.

“[The data] provides some strong evidence that Facebook can be an effective marketing channel,” explained Andrew Lipsman, vice president of industry analysis at ComScore. “These are strong results.”

This report comes in the wake of General Motors’ pre-IPO claim that the ads they placed on the site didn’t work, a statement Facebook has been attempting to refute ever since. In an effort to change public perception, the company has released data which they feel proves their ad system not only yields result, but does so on a consistent basis.

For example, people who “liked” paid advertisements from a retailer such as Target were 21 percent more likely to visit the establishment. Additionally, those who responded positively to unpaid ads were 38 percent more likely to make a purchase from that business every four weeks. Of course, according to Reuters, 80% of polled individuals claim that the advertisements on Facebook had no influence on them whatsoever.

It’s worth noting that this data does not reflect the effectiveness of Facebook mobile’s advertising, an area where the company continues to struggle.

Facebook has the daunting task of making its case to advertisers who are used to being able to buy splash page adverts or online ads that will unroll across the screen when you mouse over them. They’re used to paying for prominence by guaranteeing that their ads are seen. To most high-profile advertisers, that is advertising: you make memorable commercials or eye-catching photospreads or snappy jingles that set you apart from all other advertisers. The closest Facebook’s come to replicating that experience for advertisers is by offering up the most ineffective space possible: the log-out screen. If you’re like me or most people, though, you likely just stay logged in to Facebook while you’re browsing. Depending on your security settings, if you close a tab or even the entire browser window, the browser will still keep you logged into Facebook so you never need to sign out. In other words, it’s rare if anybody would even see the ads on the log-out screen and, of the places a business can advertise, while the billboard space may be bigger on that screen, it’s also the least likely place to be seen by a Facebooker.

The immediate problem seems to be a generational divide between Facebook’s new model of advertising and the old guard of advertisers, like GM, who made quite a scene with its decision to pull paid advertisements from Facebook a mere few days before Facebook’s initial public offering. Despite the perceived lack of results from businesses both large and small, Facebook maintains that its new style of advertising by camouflaging advertisements among the actual posts from people a user actually knows can be just as effective has the splash pages of old. Facebook’s Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions, Carolyn Everson, speaking to Ad Age, reiterated the company’s commitment to the plan to blend advertisements as inconspicuously as possible on the platform.

“We have 900+ million people on the platform and our job is to make the advertising on the platform as good and as compelling as content from [users'] parents or their friends or their boyfriends or girlfriends,” said Ms. Everson. “So when a marketer asks for something like that [meaning bigger ads that stand out], that’s just not what works on Facebook, so we would say no.” She said Facebook rarely fields requests for bigger ad units.

The most common complaint is that these subtle advertisements only lead to likes and other engagement but don’t actually turn over a financial kickback. That’s where the crux of Facebook’s whole advertising problem comes in: people still aren’t really sure how to measure the weight of Facebook “likes” against actual new customers and revenue gained from the ad campaign on Facebook. “Liking” something on Facebook is so effortless that people can follow a business Page with hardly any hesitation. Hell, I can “like” things that I honestly detest just to keep up on what my enemy interests are up to. It’s such a meaningless metric when it comes to generating revenue. The only thing it could possible do is add to the overall dossier that Facebook has on its users so as to optimize targeted ads but Facebook hasn’t really scratched the surface of that potential.

Facebook appears to be hedging all of its bets on the value of a psychological residue produced by customers interacting with brands so that, in the long run, these customers will have positive emotional attachments to these businesses whenever they need to purchase something manufactured or provided by said company. Still, publishing quirky quizzes and offering the odd coupon isn’t guaranteed to create customer loyalty any further than momentarily stoking the coals of consumers’ mercenary tendencies just enough for them to pay attention for a second until the next shiny deal comes there way.

Advertisers want to play a long game by going at consumers with ads that you can’t help but see while Facebook’s sticking to the short game of delicately splicing ads into news feeds that, honestly, if you scrolled too fast, you would probably miss them. At same time, Facebook’s counting on that ad subtlety to encourage businesses to engage customers as more than just cattle; or, at least, as intelligent cattle who are worth developing a mom-and-pop-style relationship with. But even if businesses do undertake that advertising challenge, there’s still no proof that such an effort will produce revenue, and without any proof that their efforts are worthwhile, businesses are right to hesitate on advertising on Facebook until there’s some more tangible results to show what actually works on the site.

Toyota first beat out GM in 2008, but then saw setbacks after the Japanese earthquake, Thai floods and various recalls, which prompted a loss of the top spot in 2010. Though, sales of the new Camry and Prius in the U.S. have bolstered business, allowing it to again surpass GM. Roughly 4 million Toyota hybrid models have been sold worldwide since 1997, with 1.5 million of those bought in the U.S. – though it was recently reported that the majority of hybrid owners don’t go on to buy a second hybrid.

A back and forth battle for the top spot should be expected in the coming quarters, and GM plans to relaunch the marketing of the all-electric Volt, while Volkswagon plans to sell 10 million cars by 2018. Perhaps Volkswagon will market it’s magnet-powered hovercar. This commercial for the concept car is off the chain:

Toyota has so far sold roughly 1.2 million Prius models in the U.S., and offers the classic Prius, the larger Prius V, the compact Prius C and the plug-in model. The company also makes hybrid versions of the Camry and Highlander, as well as high-end Lexus models.

GM planned to move 10,000 Volts in 2011, but sold only 7,671. Then in January the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency investigated the Volt as being a potential fire hazard, but closed the inquiry after deeming the car to be safe. Ragardless, Akerson states that the investigation “set us back, so we’ve got to rebuild,” adding that Volt sales are back up to pre-investigation levels.

Akerson said the new marketing strategy would essentially relaunch the car, steer away from plainly introducing the Volt to the public, and focus more on how the established vehicle has been working out for real customers. Akerson also stated that GM wouldn’t continue to overproduce the Volt, calling the production beyond demand “foolhardy,” with the Volt making up less than 0.5% of GM’s overall sales.

Akerson also pointed out that though the sales of the Volt have been down, they are on par with what Toyota’s Prius was selling in its first year on the market.