Facebook India has a 3-pillar strategy

A hundred days after joining Facebook, 75 flights later, and in the wake of the huge measurement scandal that has rocked the social network globally, Umang Bedi, the new Managing Director for India and South Asia, insisted that it is the most cost-effective platform for marketers and can lead to real business outcomes for companies.

“We are moving upstream in our relationship with marketers,” he told a select media gathering in Delhi, saying there were three pillars to FB India’s new growth strategy – verticals, brands and agencies.

Focus areas

Traditionally, the focus for FB was on e-commerce and FMCG. Now, says Bedi, eight verticals have been identified for a big push — e-commerce, travel, financial services, auto, tech, CPG, telcos and classifieds. FB is also working with brand managers across the country through a brand ambassador programme and getting agencies to launch creatives on the social network first. Bedi took head on questions on the measurement controversy that has rocked Facebook. The social network recently angered marketers by disclosing that its video views numbers were erroneous and inflated, that it had overestimated the time users spent reading articles and got figures of how many times a viewer returned to view a business’ page wrong.

“We are doubling down on measurements,” Bedi, said pointing out that FB had now put together a client measurement council globally (Unilever and Nestle are reportedly set to join it) as well as roping in third party analysts like Nielsen, comscore

et al to validate the numbers. “We are also opening up through metrics FYI blog posts,” he said

Asked how partners in India had reacted to the measurement goof ups, Bedi said that before the news of the errors was made public it was shared with its India Client Council and India SMB Council. “None of the reported glitches had an impact on their numbers,” he said. “The beauty of the Internet business is nothing in life is perfect. If we over-reported a metric, we were honest and transparent about it,” he said.

Bedi was at pains to point out that Facebook really had the power to move businesses, sharing case studies of Ola (sales increased 60 per cent, there was 4 X increase in brand searches post FB video ads), Yatra (5X increase in app installs after FB Mobile App install ads) etc.

“The days of cost per impression (CPI) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM), likes, tweets are all over. We are now trying to focus on real business outcomes, such as how are we helping companies move audiences, move the brand and drive sales,” he said. In India, FB is now collaborating with Nielsen, Millward Brown and BARC to correlate numbers. “ We are half the cost of any video platform and one third the cost of television,” he stressed.

India is key market

For Facebook, India is the most strategic and critical market, and also the second biggest market, said Bedi, describing initiatives to drive up the numbers here further . Currently, there are 166 million monthly active users for FB in India.

Bedi said the focus to grow sales in India was by talking about its targeted reach, through educating clients on tools they could use, and by leading in with creatives. He said in a world dominated by cookies, FB’s advantage was that it was an aggregator of real identities and could connect marketers with real people, real communities.

The social network has also been encouraging its clients to start with an FB first strategy for their creatives, and said there were already 16 examples of brands doing that.

For instance, Snapdeal started its Unbox Zindagi campaign by opening on FB first before it launched on television.