Facebook has 3 mn active advertisers

As of October 2015, about two million small businesses in India used Facebook platform, up 500,000 from August 2015

Social networking giant Facebook revealed on Thursday that it has three million active advertisers on its platform, up 50 per cent from last year. Globally, 45 million small businesses are using Facebook. About 70 per cent of these advertisers are not from the US.

As of October 2015, about two million small businesses in India used the Facebook platform, up 500,000 from August 2015. It now has 142 million monthly active users and 69 million daily active users. As many as 133 million monthly active users access Facebook via mobile.

“Facebook is the bridge to new mobile economy for small businesses, helping them communicate with customers anytime, anywhere. More than one billion people on Facebook are connected to at least one business. And, in India, over 57 per cent of people on Facebook are connected to small businesses,” said the company in a statement. Around two billion interactions were generated between businesses and people in India.

To woo more small businesses to its platform, Facebook has introduced ‘movie tool’ which helps businesses create their own stories and share them with the world. “To celebrate businesses that use Facebook to grow, we created Your Business Story — a tool that makes it easy to create a video that shows what your business brings to the world,” says a blog post by Facebook.

Facebook also announced the launch of SME India Council, first-of-its-kind in Asia Pacific. The council will interact with small businesses to discuss progress on solutions, business ideas, new successes and challenges.

In 2014, Facebook had also created an India Client Council. Some of the major brands that have joined the India Client Council include Tata Motors, Flipkart, GroupM, Madison World, Airtel and Hindustan Unilever. Facebook said more than a million advertisers create ads directly from mobile devices.

Instagram, which stared monetising its platform from last year, saw its global advertiser base touch 200,000.

More than 50 million small businesses use Facebook’s free Pages to grow. Going by their analytics, more than a billion people are connected to at least one business.