Small Businesses In Emerging Markets Can Sell On Facebook For Free

Here’s something small businesses on Facebook in the U.S. may be jealous about: Their emerging markets counterparts can sell to customers on Facebook for free.

On Wednesday (Aug. 3), Facebook said it launched the ability for small businesses in emerging markets to sell directly to customers off of their Facebook page for free. It’s part of an effort to increase advertisers in regions that are fast-growing. The idea is that, if more small business owners outside the U.S. and Western Europe are reliant on Facebook to reach their customers, they will be more willing to pay for advertisements.

“If a business is seeing value from their page, there is a higher opportunity that they could be an advertiser,” said Benji Shomair, product marketing director of Facebook Pages, in an interview with Reuters. Facebook has been making a big push in emerging markets, launching Free Basics, which is a free, bare-bones version of the internet, in greater than 30 countries and is working on drones that can beam internet to connect people who have never had access to the internet. Both pushes are part of the company’s goal to reach people who would not otherwise sign up for Facebook.

The move on the part of Facebook to provide small businesses in emerging markets with a way to sell to customers comes at a time when Facebook is focusing more on getting into search advertising. During a conference call to discuss second quarter results with Wall Street and investors, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said search advertising was on the menu. The executive didn’t provide a time frame, but he did imply it would happen sooner rather than later and said the company is in the “second phase of three phases of monetization.” Users of Facebook do more than 2 billion searches a day.