Social network says 61% of its monthly active UK users have Liked at least one local business page
Facebook has 1m advertisers, but they'll have to wait for video ads
Social network says 61% of its monthly active users have Liked at least one local business page.
Facebook now has more than 1m companies and brands advertising on its service, with 61% of its users in the UK having Liked at least one local business' page on the social network.
The 1m milestone was announced by Facebook's director of global marketing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, Dan Levy, on the company's blog.
Advertising is increasingly lucrative for Facebook. In the first quarter of 2013, Facebook's advertising revenues grew 43% year-on-year to $1.25bn (£800.8m), with mobile ads accounting for 30% of those revenues. With 1m active advertisers, that growth looks set to continue.
"Businesses big and small are growing on Facebook and this is a very exciting milestone for us," said Facebook's vice-president of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson, in a statement.
"Marketers can build personal relationships with their customers on the platform, at a scale which has never before been available."
The relationships aspect is something that Facebook is keen to push. Alongside the 1m announcement, the social network released other figures showing how engaged its users are in the UK and Europe with the pages of local businesses.
In the UK, businesses have notched up 295m "connections" with Facebook users – the aggregate number of Likes on their pages. Facebook says that these pages attract a total of 55m views and 3m comments a week.
Across the EU as a whole, local business pages have accumulated more than 1.2bn likes, while generating 270m page views and 8m comments a week.
One thing Facebook advertisers will have to wait a bit longer for, however, is the ability to run video ads on the social network.
AdAge reports that Facebook's planned launch of video units has been pushed back until mid-October, giving it more time to work on "new features" that will make their debut alongside the ads.
Advertising is what's driving increasingly fierce competition between Facebook and Google in 2013, as the former emerges as an increasingly serious rival for ad spending.
In April, industry analyst eMarketer predicted that Google will earn £2.65bn in net UK ad revenues for 2013, compared to Facebook's £279m. Yet those figures include both search and display advertising revenues, with Google dominant (and uncontested by Facebook) in the former category.
For display advertising only, eMarketer suggests the two companies are far closer, predicting £371m of UK display ad revenues for Google in 2013, and £279m for Facebook.
The scrap for local business' advertising budgets is particularly competitive in 2013, and fuelled by the boom in mobile apps and internet usage.
US-based service Yelp is pushing hard into the UK and Europe, for example, and has 45k active local business accounts (ie advertisers) with 1.1m businesses having claimed their profiles on its service for free. Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.
Facebook has 1m advertisers, but they'll have to wait for video ads
Social network says 61% of its monthly active users have Liked at least one local business page.
Facebook now has more than 1m companies and brands advertising on its service, with 61% of its users in the UK having Liked at least one local business' page on the social network.
The 1m milestone was announced by Facebook's director of global marketing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, Dan Levy, on the company's blog.
Advertising is increasingly lucrative for Facebook. In the first quarter of 2013, Facebook's advertising revenues grew 43% year-on-year to $1.25bn (£800.8m), with mobile ads accounting for 30% of those revenues. With 1m active advertisers, that growth looks set to continue.
"Businesses big and small are growing on Facebook and this is a very exciting milestone for us," said Facebook's vice-president of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson, in a statement.
"Marketers can build personal relationships with their customers on the platform, at a scale which has never before been available."
The relationships aspect is something that Facebook is keen to push. Alongside the 1m announcement, the social network released other figures showing how engaged its users are in the UK and Europe with the pages of local businesses.
In the UK, businesses have notched up 295m "connections" with Facebook users – the aggregate number of Likes on their pages. Facebook says that these pages attract a total of 55m views and 3m comments a week.
Across the EU as a whole, local business pages have accumulated more than 1.2bn likes, while generating 270m page views and 8m comments a week.
One thing Facebook advertisers will have to wait a bit longer for, however, is the ability to run video ads on the social network.
AdAge reports that Facebook's planned launch of video units has been pushed back until mid-October, giving it more time to work on "new features" that will make their debut alongside the ads.
Advertising is what's driving increasingly fierce competition between Facebook and Google in 2013, as the former emerges as an increasingly serious rival for ad spending.
In April, industry analyst eMarketer predicted that Google will earn £2.65bn in net UK ad revenues for 2013, compared to Facebook's £279m. Yet those figures include both search and display advertising revenues, with Google dominant (and uncontested by Facebook) in the former category.
For display advertising only, eMarketer suggests the two companies are far closer, predicting £371m of UK display ad revenues for Google in 2013, and £279m for Facebook.
The scrap for local business' advertising budgets is particularly competitive in 2013, and fuelled by the boom in mobile apps and internet usage.
US-based service Yelp is pushing hard into the UK and Europe, for example, and has 45k active local business accounts (ie advertisers) with 1.1m businesses having claimed their profiles on its service for free. Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.