Facebook sells more than US$5 billion a year worth of ad space to Chinese businesses and government agencies looking to promote their messages abroad, analysts estimate. That makes China Facebook's biggest country for revenue after the US, which delivered US$24.1 billion in advertising sales in 2018.
"Facebook is committed to becoming the best marketing platform for Chinese companies going abroad," Facebook wrote in Chinese on local social network WeChat in November.ByteDance, the parent company of social media sensation TikTok, used Facebook's advertising tools to do exactly that. Now looking to smaller Chinese companies to grow sales, Facebook must ease access to its advertising tools and reassure customers worried about the political dynamics.
Facebook is betting proximity to regional competitors and sales staff will lead to better ads features, the person said. In addition to China, Facebook does significant business in Asian countries including Vietnam, India and Thailand that have various types of internet restrictions.