Did you know that Viber is bigger in Sri Lanka than both Facebook and Whatsapp? May be difficult to believe but the stats don’t lie. There are more than 8 million users on Viber and only 5.6 million users on Facebook. This makes Sri Lanka a major market for Viber and it is, in fact, Viber’s 5^th largest market in terms of Viber Stickers with more than 100 million Viber Stickers sent and received each month by Sri Lankans, which means more 3,900,000 Stickers every day! This is amazing considering that there are only just over 20 million people in Sri Lanka in total.

Since its launch in 2010, Viber has grown to reach over 800 million unique registered users worldwide and more than a third of them actively use Viber every day. LOOPS is happy to not only service Viber as a client but also to be one of Viber’s strategic partners. In fact, LOOPS is now Viber’s representative/agent in the region.

For anyone who’s still unfamiliar with Viber, it’s a free and secured communications platform that has also developed into

an effective marketing platform that isn’t intrusive or annoying. Viber allows for instant messaging one-on-one and in private groups, HD voice & video calls, media sharing, virtual goods like stickers, games and GIFs and other features. Most of its marketing prowess and ad-platform capabilities come in with the use of virtual goods, especially Viber Stickers and post call ads.

Viber Stickers are basically custom designed graphical objects, sort of like emojis but way more complex and can be animated and include sound. Advertisers can use Viber Stickers to market their products and services in a fun way that’s also really meaningful, whilst incorporating branding elements overtly or more sub-textually as may be desired. Check out these two examples:

An excellent example of a marketing campaign carried out using Viber Stickers right here in Sri Lanka is Hutch’s Viber Sticker campaign, which was created, curated and executed by LOOPS.

The stats and success of the campaign is illustrative of the effectiveness of the platform. The Hutch Viber Sticker packs received the highest number of shares and downloads, which is significant because unlike other major platforms, each impression on Viber is 100% authentic.

In addition to Stickers, Viber post-call ads boast an impressive 3% click through rate and are set apart from other digital ads in that they are extremely clutter free so more people will want to actually click on them.

Viber also provides a platform for more public communications with the ability to have Public Chats, which can be a useful tool for brands, celebrities and bloggers to reach out to the masses and gain followers. For users it’s a refreshing way to get into the grove with music, film, fashion, sport and their favourite brands. Public Chats allow users to follow anyone they want and invite others to do so too, they can also ‘like’ shared content and drive traffic through sharing on other social media handles.

Viber has a proven edge over major social media platforms like Facebook. That’s because Viber has a 100% authentic reach in the face of Facebook’s constantly declining reach that is not 100% authentic anyway. Through Facebook, brands can reach only 3-5% of their followers but on Viber this is way more and the content reach on Viber Public Chat is 100%. Viber also provides a clear, uncluttered view of the content and has a greater ability than other platforms to grab and retain the attention of the user. There is also the great benefit of one off payments with no hidden and recurring costs.

Viber is certainly the better platform and it has the stats to back it up and we at LOOPS are proud to be associated with it and to represent it. In the era of social media and socially driven marketing it’s important to use a platform that has an edge over the others and Viber is that platform.