In this blog are the latest Facebook advertising statistics that show how effective Facebook ads are now and what’s likely to happen in the future.

On a brisk January morning, Sarah, a small business owner in Ohio, launched her very first Facebook ad. With a modest $150 budget, she was hoping to generate a few leads for her new skincare line. Within three days, her ad reached over 12,000 people, and she closed 18 sales,...

36.8% of the entire world’s population uses Facebook at least once per month.

In the third quarter of 2020, Facebook stated that 10 million active advertisers were using the social networking platform to promote their products and services, up from seven million advertisers in the first quarter of the previous year. Facebook advertising revenue Facebook generates the vast majority of its revenues through advertising. In 2020, the social network’s ad revenue amounted to over 84.2 billion U.S. dollars, compared to 1.7 billion U.S. dollars in other revenues.

Most of Facebook’s ad sales are generated via mobile, to the tune of 50.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2018. The company stated that mobile accounted for 92 percent of its total advertising revenue. This is hardly surprising when looking at the dominance of Facebook’s mobile presence which includes the namesake platform app but also Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and various other Facebook properties and products.

As of the second quarter of 2021, Facebook’s advertising revenue in the United States and Canada amounted to roughly 13.3 billion U.S. dollars. Other revenues came to 372 million U.S. dollars. During the same period, global Facebook ad revenues amounted to 28.5 billion U.S. dollars.

The global number of Facebook users was forecast to continuously increase between 2023 and 2027 by in total 391 million users (+14.36 percent). After the fourth consecutive increasing year, the Facebook user base is estimated to reach 3.1 billion users and therefore a new peak in 2027. Notably, the number of Facebook users was continuously increasing over the past years. User figures, shown here regarding the platform Facebook, have been estimated by taking into account company filings or press material, secondary research, app downloads and traffic data. They refer to the average monthly active users over the period and count multiple accounts by persons only once.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in up to 150 countries and regions worldwide. All indicators are sourced from international and national statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press and they are processed to generate comparable data sets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).

Facebook probably needs no introduction; nonetheless, here is a quick history of the company. The world’s biggest and most-famous social network was launched by Mark Zuckerberg while he was a...

Introduction In 2010, a small coffee shop in Portland decided to run its first Facebook ad. The owner spent just $20, targeting locals within a 5-mile radius. The result? A weekend rush that nearly tripled their regular traffic. Fast forward to 2025, and stories like this are no longer the...

In a small café in Austin, Texas, a 68-year-old grandmother shares reels of her garden with her granddaughter, who lives in Tokyo. Meanwhile, a high school student in Nairobi livestreams his gaming tutorial to friends across the world. Behind these everyday moments is Facebook, the digital backbone connecting over 3...

Which county has the most Facebook users?

              There are more than 378 million Facebook users in India alone, making it the leading country in terms of Facebook audience size. To put this into context, if India’s Facebook audience were a country then it would be ranked third in terms of largest population worldwide. Apart from India, there are several other markets with more than 100 million Facebook users each: The United States, Indonesia, and Brazil with 193.8 million, 119.05 million, and 112.55 million Facebook users respectively.

              Facebook – the most used social media

              Meta, the company that was previously called Facebook, owns four of the most popular social media platforms worldwide, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram. As of the third quarter of 2021, there were around 3,5 billion cumulative monthly users of the company’s products worldwide. With around 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social media worldwide. With an audience of this scale, it is no surprise that the vast majority of Facebook’s revenue is generated through advertising.

              Facebook usage by device
              As of July 2021, it was found that 98.5 percent of active users accessed their Facebook account from mobile devices. In fact, almost 81.8 percent of Facebook audiences worldwide access the platform only via mobile phone. Facebook is not only available through mobile browser as the company has published several mobile apps for users to access their products and services. As of the third quarter 2021, the four core Meta products were leading the ranking of most downloaded mobile apps worldwide, with WhatsApp amassing approximately six billion downloads.

In 2022, Facebook generated nearly *** billion U.S. dollars in advertising revenue. This figure is expected to further grow to exceed *** billion U.S. dollars by 2027. The social platform is responsible for roughly ** percent of the global ad revenue.

This fileset contains a series of screenshots taken from our facebook advertising account. A few days ago we noticed that some negative "SEO" tactics, for lack of a better term, were having a negative impact on the performance of ads and fan engagement on the facebook page that we've been building.

I developed a custom software package, which utilizes nueural networks I've developed, to identify a target demographic, and suggest advertising content for said target demographic.

After a short training period we were able to create advertisemsents on facebook that averaged a cost of 0.01 cents per like. We also had a fan page engagement of nearly 4 times that of major brands like Wal-Mart.

Shortly after we began to obtain success we started noticing problems with our page. Since we have a stalker issue, we determined that the issues with our page were likely related to him.

We assued this because we had a disproportinately high number of spammy, negative, and inapporpriate comments on our posts. Offline harassment of our staff by the stalker also increased significantly during this time.

Curiously, we believe that the incident with the stalker allowed us to ascertain some interesting observations about Facebook's algorithims, which I've outlined below.

We believe, after reseraching this issue, that Facebook's algorithims suffer from the following issues:

1. They are easily gamed. We think that Facebook's algorithims are hypersensitive to negative comments being made on a post, and conversely likely positive ones as well. If a post is hidden, the comments are negative, or if a user interacts with the post negatively in some way, then Facebook's algorithims will "punish" your page.

2. We think that a series of scripted fake bot accounts would easily cause the issues that we've been expriencing.

As you can see from the data provided, over 90% of our likes come from paid facebook advertisement, therefore we do not have a significant number of fake accounts on our page brought in by third party advertising because we didn't do any of that.

Moreover, we did not send any of our fans obtained via mailing lists, or offline contact to our facebook page, those fans participate with us via email and/or through our private Google+ community.

So it is safe to say that our problems have not been caused by purchasing a large amount of fake likes from any third party vendor.

In addition, because our likes were gained very quickly, at a rate of about 2.5k likes a day, we do not believe that we have suffered from changes in the general demographic of our Facebook fan base over time.

Yet almost immediately after we started expericing trolling issues with our page, we also noticed a dip in the number of fans our posts were shown to by Facebook, and the performance of our ads began to go down, even though the content on our page had not changed.

We attributed this to holes in Facebook's algorithims, and potentially to the excessive use of fake bot accounts by Facebook itself.

We cannot prove the latter satement, but there have been similar reports before. Reference - http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/08/01/facebook-investigating-claims-that-80-of-ad-clicks-come-from-bots/

This article from Forbes outlines how one startup company repoted that up to 80% of their Facebook likes were fake bot accounts even though they paid for advertising directly through Facebook.

Our reserach suggests that Facebook's advertising platform functions as follows: - An advertiser pays for likes with Facebook, and the quality of the content on their page is initially assessed by those who are liking the page, but once the page obtains a following, we believe that the quality of the content is assessed by how many people like the posts on the page directly after they are posted.

If a post gets hidden, marked as spammed, skipped over, whatever, then we beleive that Facebook kicks that post out of the newsfeeds. If this happens to a significant number of posts on the page, then we believe that Facebook places the page on an advertising black-list.

Once on this black-list ads will begin to perform poorly, and content will drop out of newsfeeds causing even the most active page to go silent.

We tested this by posting pictures of attractive blond women, which with our demographic would have normally obtained a large number of likes and we struggled to get even 10 likes at over 20k page likes when we would have previosuly obtained almost 100 likes without boosting at only 5k page likes.

Why this probably isn't seen more often: In most cases this probably takes a while to occur as pages become old and fans grow bored, but in our case, because we have a stalker trolling our page with what appears to be hundres of scripted bot accounts, the effect was seen immediately.

Our data suggests that it became a tug of war between our stalker's army of fake bot accounts (making spammy comments, hiding our posts from newsfeeds, etc) and the real fans that actually like our page (who were voting our conent up - i.e. liking it, etc).

If you look at the graph of page likes in the figures provided - you can see that the darker purple are the fans we obtained via facebook advertising, well over 90%. We believe that the light purple (the "organic" fans) is mostly comprised of our stalker's fake drone accounts. We have less than 20 family members and friends liking our page, when we began this experiment we asked them not to interact with our page or the content.

In conclusion: We still have a lot more work to do, but it is highly likely that many Facebook likes are either scripted bots, and/or that Facebook's "weighting" algorithims are very suceptible to gaming via negative "SEO" tactics. Conversely, they are likely sensitive to gaming via positive "SEO" tactics as well.

Of course we cannot say for certain where the Facebook accounts that like a page come from without acess to their internal systems, but the evidence does strongly suggest that Facebook might be plagued with a large quantity of bot accounts, and that their algorithim has to be sensitive to actions from live users, so that the quality of the content can be easily ascertained. Otherwise it would be pretty easy for an advertiser to game Facebook's system by paying for, and getting, a large quantity of likes for content that is not appealing to any significant group of people.

Again we have to reiterate that we have no solid proof of this, but our data strongly suggests that this is the case.

We have reported the issues to Facebook, but interestingly, after we made it clear that we were going to analyze and investigate the issues with our page, we have been suddenly and incessently plagued with a never ending stream of "technical difficulties" related to our advertising account.

If you'd like to collaborate on this project, please feel free to email me at Jamie@ITSmoleculardesign.com.

Over the five years through 2025-26, industry revenue is forecast to expand at a compound annual rate of 20.3% to reach £12.5 billion. Social media platforms are integral to people's lives, offering ways to communicate, create and view content and share information. According to Ofcom, approximately 89% of UK internet users in 2023 used social media apps or sites. Teenagers and young adults are the biggest users. Advertising is the primary revenue source for social media platforms, although subscription-based services are gaining momentum as platforms seek to diversify their incomes. TikTok is the success story of the past five years, becoming the most downloaded app between 2020 and 2022, according to Apptopia. The short-form video platform has over 30 million monthly users in the UK in 2025. After Musk's takeover, X, formerly known as Twitter, adjusted its content moderation and allowed previously banned accounts to return. As a result, over 600 advertisers pulled their ads from the site because of fears their brand may be associated with malcontent. In response to falling ad revenue, X has introduced a subscription-based service which enables users to verify themselves and boosts the number of people who view their tweets. Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram have responded by introducing a similar service. In 2025, more social media platforms are using AI to boost user engagement. This improves click-through rates and drives higher advertising revenue. Industry revenue is expected to grow by 6.3% in 2025-26. Over the five years through 2030-31, social media platforms' revenue is projected to climb at an estimated 9.2% to reach £19.4 billion. Regulations relating to how data is collected, stored, and shared will force advertisers and platforms to rethink how they can target their desired demographics. The tightening of regulations will raise industry compliance costs, weighing on profit margin. Older age groups present a new revenue opportunity for social media platforms if they can bridge the gap between passive TV consumption and interactive digital engagement. Augmented Reality (AR) technology will move beyond filters to become standard for immersive product trials, interactive ads, and virtual meetups

As of April 2024, Facebook had an addressable ad audience reach 131.1 percent in Libya, followed by the United Arab Emirates with 120.5 percent and Mongolia with 116 percent. Additionally, the Philippines and Qatar had addressable ad audiences of 114.5 percent and 111.7 percent.

In 2024, Meta (formerly Facebook Inc) generated over 160 billion U.S. dollars in ad revenues. Advertising accounts for the vast majority of the social network's revenue. Facebook advertising revenue – additional information Facebook’s business model heavily relies on ads, as the majority of social network’s revenue comes from advertising. In 2020, about 97.9 percent of Facebook's global revenue was generated from advertising, whereas only around two percent was generated by payments and other fees revenue. Facebook ad revenue stood at close to 86 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, a new record for the company and a significant increase in comparison to the previous years. For instance, the social network generated almost seven billion U.S. dollars in ad revenue in 2013, about 10 billion less than the 2015 figure. Facebook's average revenue per user also significantly increased in the same time span, going from 6.81 U.S. dollars in 2013 to 32.03 U.S. dollars in 2020. The U.S. and Canada are important markets for Facebook, considering the average revenue per user (ARPU) in these two countries is far above the global average. Facebook’s ARPU in the U.S. and Canada was 41.41 U.S. dollars in the last quarter of 2019, while the global average was 8.52 U.S. dollars. In Europe, Facebook’s average revenue per user was 13.21 U.S. dollars during the same time period. In terms of segments, mobile is the most promising advertising form for the company. In 2018, Facebook’s mobile advertising revenue already accounted for 92 percent of the social network’s total advertising revenue. Facebook’s mobile advertising revenue grew from an estimate of 13 billion U.S. dollars in 2015 to 50.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2018.

During a 2025 survey among marketers worldwide, around 83 percent reported using Facebook for marketing purposes. Instagram and LinkedIn followed, respectively mentioned by 78 and 69 percent of the respondents. The global social media marketing segment According to the same study, 60 percent of responding marketers intended to increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes throughout that year. LinkedIn and Instagram followed with similar shares, rounding up the top three social media platforms attracting a planned growth in organic use among global marketers in 2025. Their main driver is increasing brand exposure and traffic, which led the ranking of benefits of social media marketing worldwide. Social media for B2B marketing Social media platform adoption rates among business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketers vary according to each subsegment's focus. While B2C professionals prioritize Facebook and Instagram, both run by Meta, Inc., due to their popularity among online audiences, B2B marketers concentrate their endeavors on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn due to its goal to connect people and companies in a corporate context.

Facebook received 73,390 user data requests from federal agencies and courts in the United States during the second half of 2023. The social network produced some user data in 88.84 percent of requests from U.S. federal authorities. The United States accounts for the largest share of Facebook user data requests worldwide.

Quantifying global international mobility patterns can improve migration governance. Despite decades of calls by the international community to improve international migration statistics, the availability of timely and disaggregated data about long-term and short-term migration at the global level is still very limited. In this study, we investigate the feasibility of using non-traditional data sources to fill existing gaps in migration statistics. To this end, we use anonymised and publicly available data provided by Facebook’s advertising platform. Facebook’s advertising platform classifies its users as “lived in country X” if they previously lived in country X, and now live in a different country. Drawing on statistics about Facebook Network users (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network) who have lived abroad and applying a sample bias correction method, we estimate the number of Facebook Network (FN) “migrants” in 119 countries of residence and in two time periods by age, gender, and country of previous residence. The correction method estimates the probability of a person being a FN user based on age, sex, and country of current and previous residence. We further estimate the correlation between FN-derived migration estimates and reference official migration statistics. By comparing FN-derived migration estimates in two different time periods, January-February and August-September 2018, we successfully capture the increase in Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and Spain in 2018. FN-derived migration estimates cannot replace official migration statistics, as they are not representative, and the exact methods the FN uses for classifying its users are not known, and might change over time. However, after carefully assessing the validity of the FN-derived estimates by comparing them with data from reliable sources, we conclude that these estimates can be used for trend analysis and early-warning purposes.

According to the source's analysis based on more than ** thousand advertising account and more than *** thousand ad campaigns, interactions were the most used Facebook ad objective globally in January and February 2024. Traffic came second, with **** percent.

As of February 2025, the Philippines had the highest potential Facebook ad reach rate in the Asia-Pacific region, amounting to around ***** percent of the adult population. In comparison, Facebook ads in Japan had a potential reach of about **** percent among the population aged 18 years and over.

As of April 2024, it was found that men between the ages of 25 and 34 years made up Facebook largest audience, accounting for 18.4 percent of global users. Additionally, Facebook's second largest audience base could be found with men aged 18 to 24 years.

              Facebook connects the world

              Founded in 2004 and going public in 2012, Facebook is one of the biggest internet companies in the world with influence that goes beyond social media. It is widely considered as one of the Big Four tech companies, along with Google, Apple, and Amazon (all together known under the acronym GAFA). Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide and the company also owns three other billion-user properties: mobile messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger,
              as well as photo-sharing app Instagram. Facebook usersThe vast majority of Facebook users connect to the social network via mobile devices. This is unsurprising, as Facebook has many users in mobile-first online markets. Currently, India ranks first in terms of Facebook audience size with 378 million users. The United States, Brazil, and Indonesia also all have more than 100 million Facebook users each.