All is not going well for Facebook, as far as advertising revenue in India is concerned. Thus, in a bid to entice advertisers towards its online advertising model, the company has announced special features like free email support for queries related to advertising and advice on increasing ad sales.
India, which is Facebook’s second biggest market amounts to 132 million users, next only to the United States with 193 million users. However, for that 132 Million users, Facebook is earning close to just $8 Million, against over $2 Billion in revenues
Its advertising revenue in India has been dismal and generated only 15 cents per user every quarter, where as in the US the numbers stand at $7 to $8 per user each year, according to analysts.
The numbers are based on the figures provided by Counterpoint Research, a Hong Kong based technology consulting firm, which puts the figures at $15 million a quarter, compared to the $350 million per quater revenue generated by Google in India. One reason behind Google’s success is that it arrived in India six years earlier, and as business in India runs more on loyalty and word of mouth, Facebook may need some time to catch up.
Not wishing to fall behind, the company came up with a new concept for its online ads, named ‘click to missed call’ designed for India.
As the ad suggests, once the users click on the ad, they are automatically redirected to the advertiser. The add on here is that the user can hang up the call and the advertiser calls back with a pre-recorded message.
But, Counterpoint analyst’s point out that advertising in India is still dominated by Television, and feel it will take time till advertisers realize the advantage of marketing through Facebook and it’s tools such as the Messenger to interact with customers as a way of increasing sales.
Surprisingly, Facebook is number one in the world when it comes to overall ad efficacy, according to a report titled “It’s Time To Separate Social From Media”, by analysts Nate Elliott and Richard Joyce. They opine that Facebook’s ad products deliver better results than those of its competitors.
Facebook ad sales reached figures of $4 billion last quarter, with revenue generated from mobile ads amounting to over $2.9 billion.
Tech-giants have been eyeing for the Indian market due to its large scale human resource. Facebook too has been registering positive growth in the market with an increase of 22 percent last year.
Facebook stated that it plans to use its strategy in India for other similar markets such as Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico.
The company understands that India is an important market, and figures supplement this fact further by showing that Facebook generated $4 billion in revenue outside the U.S. and Canada in the second quarter of this year, majority of which came from Asia.
