GM announced the decision to drop Facebook paid ads on Tuesday in what was the first highly visible crack in Facebook's strategy and illustrated doubts about its perceived advantage over traditional media.

GM's decision followed Facebook officials' failure to convince top marketing executives at the U.S. automaker of the benefits of Facebook's paid ads at a meeting that took place in the past few weeks, people familiar with the meeting said on Thursday.

GM, the third-largest U.S. advertiser, will still maintain Facebook pages, which cost nothing to create and for which it pays no fees, to market its vehicles.