India second largest market for Facebook, says FB vice-president Mark D'Arcy

KOCHI: India is the second largest market for Facebook and in two years, a ten-fold growth in data penetration is set to occur with data getting cheaper, according to Mark D’Arcy, vice-president of global business marketing and chief creative officer of Facebook. “In the US, the digital will eclipse the traditional media with 54 percent share,” he said addressing the second day session of the World Congress of International Advertising Association here on Thursday.

Mark D’ Arcy spoke on ‘The crowd sings back-the best ideas shaping culture are shaped by culture’ during a conversation with Neeraj Roy, managing director and CEO of Hungama Digital Media Entertainment.

Mark stressed the need to constantly listen to people and reach out to them accordingly. He also said that the fundamental duty is to protect the data of all users.

“Facebook believes in removing barriers and taking ideas of individuals to as many people as possible,” he said.

A total of six million companies are using the platform to take their products to the people.

“Now we have infinite choices and control. We have to build an idea and drive a change. Consumers are in charge of it. They give us time and we have to curate an idea accordingly. The cost of implementing an idea is less now,” he said and added the sweet spot of videos is the first three seconds where you catch the attention.

Chief marketing officer, Alibaba, Chris Tung, who addressed the second session, spoke on the ‘Unique Alibaba model for brand growth,’ and said that Alibaba is now a combination of Amazon, Facebook and Google which makes it unique. Alibaba is uniquely positioned as provider of a single source of consumer truth by digitising the entire life cycle of consumer brand relationship, he said.