Facebook tops $1b revenue in Asia for the first time

Mark Zuckerberg pictured in 2012. Photo credit: TechCrunch’s Flickr.

In a record high, Facebook pulled in just over US$1 billion in revenue from the Asia-Pacific region, shows the company’s newest earnings release.

The US$1.03 billion figure for Q2 2016 has more than doubled from the US$431 million Facebook pulled in from the region exactly two years ago. It’s mostly brought in by advertising.

Even Chinese state media is a fan of using Facebook.

The huge milestone comes without any help from the people of China, who are prevented from accessing Facebook by the country’s strict web blocking system. However, Facebook’s bottom line is benefitting from a lot of Chinese companies using its site and ad platform to reach customers around the globe. Even Chinese state media is a fan of using Facebook as part of its “soft power” outreach to the world.

While the booming Asia revenue will please Zuckerberg and crew, the money Facebook makes from Europe has also doubled in the past two years – while in the US and Canada it has more than doubled, indeed nearly tripled, in the same period.

Facebook’s total revenue for Q2 was an all-time high of US$6.44 billion, which has doubled since Q3 2014.

Getting active

Elsewhere in Facebook’s newest data:

• Daily active users in Asia reach 346 million from a global total of 1.13 billion.
• Monthly active users in Asia hit 592 million from the 1.71 billion total.
• Average revenue per user in Asia grows to US$1.77…
• …But that’s still way below the US$14.34 it makes from every user in the US and Canada.

Facebook earlier this month celebrated strong-arming one billion people to become active users of its spin-off Messenger app.

See more on Facebook:

• Facebook tests payments on Pages in Southeast Asia
• Why chatbots suit India better than apps
• I tried a ton of chatbots. Here’s the good and the bad