Facebook now has more than 4 million businesses actively advertising on its platform, while Instagram, which it bought two years ago, has 500,000, up from 200,000 in February.

Facebook
More than 70 per cent of Facebook’s advertisers come from outside of the US. The fastest-growing region for ads is South East Asia, while the fastest-growing countries include Vietnam, Indonesia, Greece, Ukraine and Philippines.

The top five countries based on year-on-year growth of advertisers from 2015 to 2016 are the US, Brazil, Vietnam, Mexico and the UK.

More than 85 per cent of active business ‘Pages’ globally use mobile and 40 per cent of advertisers have created a Facebook ad on mobile, with boosted posts and promoted pages being the top advertising tools.

More than 20 per cent of active advertisers created video ads in the last month, with more than 4 million new video ads being created.

Instagram
The US, Brazil, UK, Australia and Canada are the top countries for Instagram ad adoption.

Three months ago, the app maker launched advertising features such as profile accounts for businesses, which has been used by more than 1.5 million companies.

The tools also provide insights for businesses, such as who followers are and which posts resonate well, as well as the ability to promote popular posts into ads from within the app.

Instagram revealed statistics about the success of its platform: 50 per cent of users follow a business and 60 per cent said they learn about a product or service on Instagram.

What’s more, 75 per cent said they take action after being inspired by a post, such as visiting a website, searching, shopping or telling a friend. Ads also contribute to a 2 per cent lift in offline sales for some enterprises.

It also claims that since ads launched in September 2015, there have been 1 billion actions taken on Instagram ads.

Instagram gave the example of Adidas Korea to highlight its advertising services: the company decided to pair Instagram video and carousel ads with Facebook marketing and found its campaign achieved three times more link clicks than expected, 15 per cent higher view-through rate when compared to Facebook alone, and three times higher ad reach than expected.