Facebook India inches closer to Google Billion dollar ad revenue in India

Social media giant Facebook is inching closer to search engine behemoth Google digital ad revenue in India.

Facebook, continuing its growth trajectory upward, is likely to post around $980 million in revenue this year, which is just $120 million away from what Google earned last year, said a Mint report quoting sources from Reuter.

The reason for the social media firm unprecedented growth is its being more user-friendly platform and transcend language barriers more easily because consumers rely more on visual elements. Consumers have been gravitating to those content and its other popular platforms such as Instagram and Whatsapp.

Last year, Facebook India posted around 93% jump in revenue to Rs 341.8 crore from Rs 177 crore the year before. Its net profit climbed 31% to Rs 40.7 crore from Rs 31 crore.

Meanwhile, the development has shaken the search engine giant, which has been in India before Facebook. What is more worrying for Google is, the social giant is managing this scale without a country head.

Google has time and again reiterated that it sees India as the next big market in the world and has been developing market-friendly products. Recently it strengthens its India leadership team with fresh hires.

Sajith Sivanandan, who was the managing director at Google for Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and new emerging markets, has called into Bengaluru as head of payments and access service in India.

The internet giant also brought back Ambarish Kenghe from Flipkart-owned Myntra to lead product development for its UPI-based payment platform, Google Pay.

Google India has around 4000 employees whereas Facebook India is reported to have about 500 employees only.

Sundar Pichai, after taking over the helm as CEO, has chalked out a new strategy for places more services tailored to locals. And Google has been witnessing growth too.

According to a Comscore report, Indian users during the first half of this year spent more time on Google services than on Facebook services. Last year, Facebook was on top.

Somehow this has not reflected on revenue of the search engine India operations.

Whereas Facebook has commercialised few services. A week ago it started charging for text-based marketing features on WhatsApp, with video ads expected to launch next year. This is also garnering good traction among small businessmen. Facebook claims to work with the top 200 advertisers in India.

Social media platform has 225 million monthly active users (MAU) in Indian urban and rural areas. India is the biggest market for Facebook followed by the US and Brazil.

Currently, Facebook and Google between them claim 68 per cent of India’s digital ad market last year, according to advertising buyer Magna.

In India, digital advertising spending is expected to grow 30 per cent this year.