Facebook Australia's launch of a buy-and-sell option in Australia and New Zealand is testing the water for the social media giant's global commercial initiatives in the area.
AIM Group's Kate Lyons has been told the launch was in response to the thriving presence of for-sale groups on the Australian social media site.
Facebook's ANZ head of communications Antonia Sands said the company "wasn't talking in detail" about its global buy and sell strategy at present as these were very early days in the test.
She would also not confirm why Australia had been chosen for the test but she did state that For Sale groups had thrived in Australia for Facebook because of the unique demand they serviced in the local market.
"These communities are formed around shared interests, passions and locales," Sands said. "In addition to the practical value of buying and selling, people join For Sale groups because of the emotional and social value of connecting to a community."
Sands said the majority of those who bought and sold through Facebook groups also belonged to multiple groups but that Facebook wanted to simplify the process of joining, browsing and posting across these multiple groups.
"This is an opportunity to make For Sale groups more accessible to a broader audience," Sands said. "People will be able to access public listings as a bookmark under Favorites and see all items posted locally by other people in their area. We are testing multiple ways for people to list items to their local Buy and Sell, either directly or by cross posting from existing For Sale groups."
Both the buy and sell drive and the push to local marketplaces are inevitably a challenge by Facebook to established, successful local marketplaces like EBay and Gumtree. Facebook's Buy and Sell test drive is also the latest in a raft of new commercial and ad revenue generating initiatives from the social media giant.
In February, Facebook announced new buying and selling tools for its global sites. Locally in July, Facebook Australia struck a deal with three offline data providers, Quantium, Experian and Aexiom, in an attempt to mesh users' offline behavior with Facebook's online information and allow better targeting of users by advertisers. This has been seen by commentators as an attempt to challenge Google's dominance of the online ad spend market.
Facebook Australia's revenue grew by more than 70 per cent in 2014, to $101.6 million. This is against a 43 per cent increase in global ad revenue in the second quarter of last year and a 74 per cent increase in global mobile advertising.
Facebook Australia's data play launch included major brands such as Nestle and Suncorp. Facebook Australia also invested in new video advertising initiatives earlier this year, including the appointment of Kenny Griffiths, co-founder of Volt Media, as its head of video in Australia and former Mediacom group director Daniel King as head of media planning. In Australia, Facebook's video posts have increased by 50 per cent in the last 12 months.
-AIM Group