As the social giant Facebook continues to grow, it aims to tap into more market in emerging countries where mobile is the main medium of internet connection. Beside having its Internet.org initiative connects more people to the internet, the company targets the Asia-Pacific regions where most of the world's population stays.
The Asia-Pacific regions is home to some of the social network's biggest markets. And for that, Facebook is aiming to penetrate deeper into the consumers' minds by seeking more people in that area.
The overall number of monthly active people on Facebook is growing at about 14 percent a year, and in the Asia-Pacific that is the home of two-third of the world's population, 's growing at 21 percent. This is the reason why Facebook is focusing more into that area for the likelihood to add the next few billion users.
Nearly all of Facebook's revenue comes from fees that companies pay to show users ads. At the third quarter of 2014, the company successfully booked $3.2 billion in ads revenue. As the company heavily depends on ad revenue, more users means more viewers. To overcome the limit of revenue, Facebook should seek as much users as it can.
The Asia-Pacific regions that have the most population are: China, India and Indonesia. These countries are the next main target for the Menlo Park, California-based company which already had 1.35 billion monthly global active users.
Read: Facebook Seeking the Next Billion Users
More Challenges and Opportunities
Facebook is one of the global brands that have a great impact in such amount of time. The growth of the company is really gratifying as to what a big part of people's lives it has become. In developed countries, Facebook is already having a strong ground, but in less developed worlds, it's still relying on its many abilities and resources to tap into the users' lives.
Besides China, the Asian countries with the most population are Indonesia and India. In these countries, PCs are still a popular platform for users, but increasingly, mobile devices are becoming a trend to most. This presents a new challenge and opportunities for both Facebook and its advertisers.
In emerging markets, the technological environments is ever-changing. And for that, Facebook needs to tailor each strategy to better aim those countries.
"Each market is different. Some are quite developed and sophisticated, like Australia. We have other markets that are very early-stage and growing rapidly, like India, Indonesia and Thailand, " said Dan Neary that oversees Facebook's advertising operations across Asia-Pacific.
In the already-developed worlds, mobile usage tends to be more stagnant that those in emerging markets where mobile is still a growing trend. Since Asia-Pacific regions are already very much mobile-driven, still not many of them are using smartphones for their mobile solution.
So the approach is different.
"In many markets their very first experience coming online is frankly with Facebook and on a mobile device. But the reality is 70 percent of the world is still using feature phones [as opposed to smartphones]. In India and Indonesia over 50 percent of our access is on feature phones. So we spend a lot of time developing solutions around that," continued Neary.
By successfully tap into the pool of audience in that region, Facebook that currently have 80 percent of its users come from mobile devices, can increase its revenue in ad placements.
"About 66 percent of our advertising revenue is generated on mobile. Last year at this time it was 49 percent. One of the things we tell people is look, it's marketing 101: You want to be where your users are spending their time. Right now 25 percent of all media is consumed on mobile devices. Yet only 1 percent of marketing spend is [on mobile]. There's an enormous opportunity," explained Neary.
People are connecting to the internet and Facebook is a lot of different ways. Facebook is overseeing the situations also from Instagram, which at the current stage is growing quicker than Facebook, and from WhatsApp.
Here, Facebook has found out that many of those users aren't yet connected to Facebook.
Over time, Facebook's first and foremost focus in on connecting the world and building out these networks. And it's still continuing its attempt to develop the right way to connect brands and marketers that want to connect with people using those platforms.
To create trust, Facebook is constantly focused on making its News Feed as relevant as possible.
But since there are still many people that are abusing their page posts by creating spams, the company still has a lot of work to do before being well-accepted brand in the region.
