Facebook released an update less than a couple of weeks ago (on March 14th) announcing that there are now over 241 million Facebook users in Southeast Asia (SEA), with an abnormally high 94% of us connected to it via mobile devices. While the number is still smaller than Indonesia’s population of around 259 million, it’s still a significant number we’re talking here — Facebook has around 1.59 billion active users currently, and a quarter of a billion is almost one sixth of that, which is a huge chunk. Speaking of Indonesia, Facebook’s photo sharing arm Instagram, is also seeing a strong growth across SEA with 22 million Instagrammers in Indonesia alone.
Facebook pointed that a new study conducted by McKinsey showed that half of all Facebook users are connected to someone in a different country, a number that has tripled last year’s. There’s also an analysis showing that 30% of over 50 million small businesses using Facebook have fans from other countries.
Now, Facebook’s mission to connect the world also has a side goal — to rake in more advertising money — and the social networking giant sees SEA as mobile-first region and has a huge growth potential. Kenneth Bishop, Managing Director of Facebook in SEA said that they’re committed to invest in their expertise and resources to help businesses in SEA to grow and “achieve measurable business results”.
Engagement is also pretty high in SEA. Facebook notes:
- Compared to the global average, Malaysians send almost 50% more Facebook messages to businesses each month. Maybe that’s because we love to send our one-liners like “PM best price bro”;
- Compared to the global average, twice as many Singaporeans and Thais send Facebook message to businesses each month. What an inquisitive bunch.
A few example success stories in Malaysia include companies like Lazada, AirAsia, Honor Malaysia, and Christy Ng Shoes. Lazada grew its fan base 60X in one year to now cover 80% of the Malaysian population. AirAsia gained a 58X return on advertising spending using “Lookalike Audiences” and apparently broke Facebook’s global records for ad recall in the travel sector. Honor Malaysia used targeted link ads to reach 15.5 million people in just four weeks. Christy Ng Shoes managed to achieve a 2X year-on-year sales growth and founder Christy Ng attributed the success to Facebook as well.
This news came after Facebook’s announcement that it now has 3 million advertisers on its network, a 50% growth in just one year. A large part of that growth is said to be driven by advertisers in SEA.
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