Only 5% of 40 Million Business Pages Are Advertising On Facebook

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) has become kind of a new home for everyone. Be it the general internet users or business owners, everyone is trying to make their presence counted. That’s why Facebook has decided to make it easier for the business page owners to increase their reach by introducing some new programs.

The pace with which Facebook is growing can be determined by the fact that in just one year, the number of Facebook business pages has increased by 10 million and touched the magical figure of 40 million from last year’s 30 million.

However, only 5% of the business pages on Facebook are investing in advertisements, while the rest 95% are still dependent on some other medium. This is definitely bothering Facebook and thus they are trying to create the supportive environment which would force the business page owners to use Facebook ads to reach their customers.Dan Levy, the Vice President of Facebook Small business, recently said that Facebook is trying to bring in a lot of updates to the pages so that business can expand their reach and get more customers. He quoted,

Dan Levy, the Vice President of Facebook Small business, recently said that Facebook is trying to bring in a lot of updates to the pages so that business can expand their reach and get more customers. He quoted,

“Increasingly the utility of pages for people and businesses is something that’s really important.”

Facebook Pages: No More A Free Lunch

Earlier, Facebook had introduced an algorithm which decreased the reach of business pages by a great extent. This left the business owners wondering how they should proceed further. On connecting the dots, one can easily see the intentions behind the decision of abating the reach of business pages; Apparently, Facebook wants business pages to invest in advertisement program which would open a whole new dimension of revenue for the company.

However, most of the business page owners feel that Facebook is failing to make a balance between ad revenue and the interest of business page owners. At a side when the organic reach of business pages is almost dead, the social networking giant is introducing features, such as Call to actions buttons and many more for to benefit brands. Now, Facebook wants businesses to use their page as a one stop solution for providing services.

Until now the business pages are being used only for branding and marketing purpose, but now Facebook is looking forward to make it as a comprehensive suite of service offerings for brands, which means that the pages will help the fans book flights, make purchase, schedule appointments with a doctor etc. Basically, Facebook is trying to provide an eCommerce platform to the businesses that could empower them to use their branding to draw consumers via their Facebook pages. This can open a whole new stream of revenue for business owners and ultimately for Facebook since the more business owners will earn, the more they will invest in advertisements.

This will also help small business to grow to the next level. Currently, the small businesses get themselves enrolled with some major eCommerce sites such as Amazon to sell their products. The introduction of these features in Facebook pages will brands reach their customers directly from their business pages, which will in turn help them to create a better brand awareness of their business.

However, this could turn out to be a major setback for not only the eCommerce sites but also for marketplaces like eBay and BestBuy. As of the first quarter of 2015, Facebook has a massive user base of 1.44 billion monthly active users. So, if applied properly this update could turn out to be a massive success for Facebook as well as the small business owners as Facebook’s active user base is so huge that the small business owners will have a very good chance to convert them into their clients.