According to Facebook’s assessment, rural areas in Vietnam are rapidly adapting to smartphones, especially features such as chat and video calling.
Facebook sees great potential in rural Vietnam (Photo: Nikkei) Facebook is looking for a new growth approach in rural Vietnam as its advertising business gets tougher than before. According to Facebook’s assessment, rural areas in Vietnam are rapidly adapting to smartphones, especially features such as chat and video calling. Responding to the Nikkei newspaper, the social network said that Vietnam and Thailand lead the world in using chat in online sales, in terms of the volume of messages exchanged between businesses and customers. Mr. Khoi Le, in charge of Facebook business in Vietnam, revealed that many of his colleagues in the US have been “opened eyes” to this trend. Currently, Vietnam is an extremely important market for Facebook. According to Nikkei, in its financial report filed in January this year, Facebook listed Vietnam as the largest revenue engine in Southeast Asia. Globally, nearly all of the company’s revenue comes from advertising. Mr. Le said rural markets are part of Facebook’s next phase. Of the 98 million Vietnamese, 62 million live in rural areas. Even so, their spending is expected to grow faster than those of urban dwellers. Facebook forecasts that rural spending on FMCG will grow 7% annually from 2020 to 2025, compared with 2% in cities. A survey by GroupM company on 4,500 Vietnamese people living in rural areas, Facebook pointed out that if in 2018, television is still their main traditional means, by 2020, the rate of watching TV will be only 86% and remaining Internet usage rate will reach 91%. Mr. Le shared: “I used to think that rural people are not really proficient in using the Internet.” However, a Facebook survey found that 92% of rural households own a smartphone, using it to play games, shop and watch television. “They used every tool at hand extremely proficiently,” Mr. Le said. Given the growing video-watching habits of Vietnamese users, Facebook has identified several areas of focus, including live streaming, TV shows on Facebook Watch, video clips in the news feed, reposts. from Facebook-owned Instagram. For e-commerce, Le said these options will complement Facebook’s chat feature, from chatbots to allowing sellers to answer questions directly via livestream. The company hopes it will help retailers stay connected with customers, especially after Apple’s policy took effect in April, requiring iPhone owners to allow apps to track them. The change in Apple’s policy means that companies buying ads from Google or Facebook will send targeted ads to the right audience. On Monday, Apple unveiled more security features for its latest operating systems, a move expected to further disrupt online advertising. According to Phuc Ngo, Director of Strategic Planning at marketing agency Vero, advertisers are still figuring out how to adapt to Apple’s strict tracking policy. Custom ads are currently the most effective, while “community commerce” like Facebook is touting plays a small role in the translations he manages. Mr. Ngo said: “Before the policy change, you can completely depend on Facebook’s artificial intelligence because it is very smart.” While the Vietnamese countryside is getting richer, it still lags behind the cities. The minimum monthly wage in Hanoi is 4.4 million VND, compared to 3 million VND in poor provinces. Focusing on video will bring Facebook closer to competitors like YouTube, TikTok. In contrast, TikTok is also wary of Facebook and YouTube. A survey of research firms Decision Lab said Facebook is the top choice of Vietnamese users when it comes to watching short videos, but it lost 3% in the first quarter from a year ago, while TikTok doubled its market share. Although Mr. Le emphasized the role of e-commerce in helping businesses connect with rural customers, cost is still a major obstacle. With little infrastructure outside of cities, overall logistics costs equate to 16.8% of gross domestic product, higher than the Asian average, according to the Ministry of Commerce’s 2020 Vietnam Logistics Report. . Companies can advertise their products to Vietnamese farmers. But shipping those products after a successful promotion is another matter.
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