Ataxo / About us /  Number of people on Facebook rapidly grows.

Number of people on Facebook rapidly grows. Advertisers have chances in the wind.

Potential for advertising on Facebook is enormous. Yet many advertisers are deterred by the absence of invoices.
PRAGUE

At present the Facebook social network has approximately 1.3 million users in the Czech Republic; it represented circa 700 000 people at the end of the last year.

Almost 100-percent increase of users attracts also those interested in advertising; during the given period the number of advertisers increased from three tens to almost one thousand.

Volume of advertising placed on Facebook in the Czech Republic can be now only estimated and it ranges in millions of Czech crowns. “The potential is immense here. However, Facebook is harmed by the fact that it does not issue invoices; and this discourages advertisers,” stated Pavel Doležal, Director of Ataxo, company that performs placing of advertisements in the Internet search engines.

Volume of advertising increases also on other webs. According to Mr. Doležal, from the volume of advertising viewpoint Facebook so far cannot compete e.g. with the search engine Google, which realizes several hundreds of millions Czech crowns per year. Potential of Facebook for advertising, as Mr. Doležal stated, lies mainly in the fact that advertising on Facebook can be targeted on specific groups of users.

“Moreover, concept of this social network is unique in the Czech Republic and it differs from webs such as Lidé.cz, Spolužáci. cz or Líbímseti.cz as these servers serve only for certain interest groups of users, whereas from this point of view the Facebook is unlimited and also very topical,” declared Mr. Doležal.

Volume of Internet advertising keeps growing also on other webs, even this year affected by the economic crisis. Based on the latest available data provided by Association for Internet Advertising (SPIR) the volume of Internet advertising during the first half of this year increased in the year-to-year perspective by 24 percent to almost 1.6 billion Czech crowns. According to the original SPIR estimates in the start of 2009, this year the volume of advertising on web should increase 26 percent from the last-year five billion crowns. Yet the later forecast of the association states growth by one tenth.

Source: Financninoviny.cz, 17 September 2009