Last week, I wrote about how digital marketing works Social media plays a big role in digital marketing. Of all the social media tools, Facebook has the largest number of active users – 1.86 billion monthly.

Facebook has been the number one social media website for several years running. Recent statistics show that for any business, marketing to the Facebook demographic is a great way to boost its digital marketing strategies.

In this post I will share some Facebook statistics and what they mean for your business.

But before we plunge into the statistics, here is a bit of background on Facebook.

Facebook History

1. Launched on February 4th, 2004
2. Created by Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard roommates
3. Was called Facemas and then Thefacebook
4. Started off as a university social site, then opened to everyone on the internet
5. According to brandwatch, in the first 3 months of 2016, Facebook made $1.51 billion
6. The fifth most valuable company in the world with market value in excess of $321 billion
7. Has close to 13,000 employees
8. Has acquired competitors like Instgram, WhatsApp and  Oculus

Facebook’s phenomenal success comes because it taps into the fundamental aspects of how people socialize – we tend to share information with our friends, family and colleagues. Facebook is the platform to share information with your social network regardless of their geographic location.

Plus, its basic service is free. What’s to stop people from joining? Nothing.

This post will share some of the latest statistics about Facebook usage and its advertising.

These statistics will definitely add value to your digital marketing and social media marketing plan for 2017.

Top 10 Facebook usage Statistics in 2022

1. Facebook continues to be the preferred social media platform. According to Statista, it is the social media network with the largest number of active users in a month.
2. It has 18% market share, which is 7% more than Facebook-owned WhatsApp.
3. 
4. APAC competitors like QQ, WeChat and QZone are the closest to provide significant competition
5. Photograph sharing social media website Instagram is also a competitor with 4% market share
6. Mobile usage has been rising significantly. Almost 1.2 billion users login from mobile phone daily. 

People in the 25-34 age group form the most common age demographic

1. More women than men use Facebook daily (83% of female FB users are logging in daily)
2. However, 75% of men on social media use Facebook regularly
3. 80% of time spent on social media platforms is via mobile
4. Regional break up of Facebook penetration shows that the
   1. American continents have the highest penetrations by percentage of population
   2. Asia has over 550 million users (33% of the Facebook user population)
   3. Although Australia has only around 38 million people, 51% of them are on Facebook
   4. 49.5% of the world’s population uses the Internet, 22.8% use Facebook

Significance of Facebook usage statistics for your business

1. You can no longer ignore Facebook as a digital marketing platform
2. It is easier to target advertisements to your desired demographic on this platform than any other
3. You have a worldwide market available to you through Facebook
4. Consistent usage behavior shows that Facebook users are a promising audience for your marketing efforts
5. The 25-34 age group is a prime marketing target for many companies. You have the opportunity to engage with them easily and quickly.

How Facebook advertising works

If you decide to become an advertiser on Facebook, you should know a few fundamentals about how the process works.

It is quite a simple process really. You let Facebook know how much you can spend on the ad, create the ad and let Facebook’s algorithm work and wait for it to get picked up.

Facebook advertising works on a bidding system. As an advertiser of product or service you can decide how much you are willing to pay for the time you need the ad to run.

Placing the right bid is critical because Facebook limits the number of ads a user sees. This means that you don’t want the following things to happen:

• Pay too much for ad results
• Ads never get picked up because you bid too low

There are many bidding strategies available for advertisers which suits their various requirements.

Adsense has a wonderful post about what ad bidding strategies are available in Facebook ad bids, which I will summarize here:

• Cost per mile or CPM: Excellent strategy for creating brand awareness through displays but not guaranteed to create specific results
• Cost per Click or CPC: You bid for clicks, Facebook will deliver it based on the action it generates from users. If your ad has more relevance it will get delivered more times even if the bid was low. A higher bid ad with no relevance will stop being delivered because it results in no user action.
• Conversion bids: Ads are delivered to your relevant audience to ensure conversion<
• Other strategies include Daily Unique Reach and Post Engagement

The important things to remember are:

• Know the audience that you are targeting
• The quality of your ad is critical to its success
• Timing is as crucial as quality

While you decide which strategy suits your need best, here are some statistics that show why it pays to advertise on Facebook.

11 Facebook Advertising statistics that you should know

1. One in five minutes spent on a mobile phone is spent on the Facebook App/li>
2. Over 30 million businesses have Facebook pages
3. 2 million businesses use Facebook for advertising
4. Mobile advertising accounts for more than 60% of Facebook ad revenue
5. Over 90% marketers consider Facebook critical for social media marketing
6. Over 80% ads are targeted by country/li>
7. Close to 50% ads are targeted by interest
8. “Shop Now” is the most popular Call to Action or CTA in an advertisement
9. People are also likely to click “Learn More”, “Book Now”, “Download” and “Sign Up”
10. According to business2community in the last quarter of 2014, average advertising revenue per user was $2.20.
    1. USA and Canada – $8.26
    2. Europe – $3.22
    3. Asia Pacific – $1.21
    4. Rest of the world – $0.92
11. According to adpresso, cost of campaigns per user was significantly less than the revenue generated. The 2015 figures from USA provide a good benchmark:
    1. CPC campaign: less than $0.36
    2. Cost per Like campaign: $0.25
    3. Cost per App install: $2.96

What I also found interesting as that businesses in Singapore and Australia have some of the highest spending in Facebook campaigns. Perhaps it is not surprising considering these countries have some of the highest Facebook penetrations in the world.

Significance of Facebook advertising statistics

What do these advertising statistics mean for the marketing plan for your business?

• With the right bidding strategy, you can expect significant ROI
• You can reach the demographic of your choice worldwide for a fraction of the cost of traditional channels
• Mobile advertising is the area that you need to dedicate a significant budget of your campaign
• Building a Facebook presence with a business page should become a priority action
• Dedicated engagement of customers on Facebook is a great way to drive customers both to your website and to your offline business

The right campaign can give your business the right boost. Facebook is an ideal advertising platform for small businesses with small budgets.

To get the right response, a little bit of help from a digital marketing expert can go a long way in bringing in significant revenues from your Facebook advertisements.