Thursday, May 9, 2013
eMarketer: Emerging Markets Drive Facebook User Growth
But analysis of many sources suggests user numbers in mature markets are not falling. Read the full releases on global and UK Facebook usage.
NEW YORK, NY (May 9, 2013)—India, Brazil and Russia, along with the Middle East and Africa, are driving the biggest gains in Facebook’s worldwide user base. According to new estimates from eMarketer, Facebook will pass 1 billion active users worldwide in 2013 as the company sees particularly strong growth in its Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Latin American user bases, with each region set to rise by about 30% or more this year. By next year, Facebook will reach 1.26 billion global users.
The new figures—which include eMarketer’s first-ever estimates for Facebook users in the Netherlands, Norway, Finland and Denmark—represent individual monthly active users who access Facebook via any device at least once per month. That’s different from Facebook’s reported figures, which includes all monthly active users (MAUs)—such as users operating pet accounts, brands and other types of accounts, along with individual users.
eMarketer is relatively distinct in its methodology for evaluating Facebook usage, basing our estimates on an analysis of data sets from many third-party research sources, including survey and traffic data from research firms and regulatory agencies, historical trends, company-specific data, and demographic and socio-economic factors.
This allows eMarketer to consider the many discrepancies between research figures on Facebook, particularly their variance in methodology and definitions.
Despite some reports to the contrary, the collective body of research figures aggregated and analyzed by eMarketer suggests that Facebook’s user base is not declining in mature markets such as the US, though some users may be spending less time on Facebook and more time on Instagram—which Facebook owns, but many research firms track separately. Meanwhile, older adults in mature markets continue to increase usage of Facebook, eMarketer estimates.
Many third-party figures analyzed by eMarketer, while noting declines in desktop usage, did not account for mobile usage of Facebook. Other firms that use panel-based measurement figures have only just begun to track mobile Facebook usage, making it difficult to differentiate long-term trends in mobile usage from seasonal variance. Figures on Facebook’s mobile usage from many firms suggest strong uptake over the past year. Other survey-based figures suggest that while US time spent on Facebook may be declining among some groups like teens and younger adults—who have historically been very active Facebook users—their usage still falls within the definitions for “active usage” that eMarketer and many firms follow, which is a login or engagement with the platform over the course of a month.