How Many People Are Really On Facebook Everyday?

As a marketer, you have to go where the people are, and the people are on Facebook. 

In the first quarter of 2018, there were more than two billion active users on Facebook. That means more than a quarter of the global population logged into their account within the space of a month. 

Ignore the media sounding the death knell for Mark Zuckerburg’s creation. This monthly active users figure continues to grow in 2018, and it remains far higher than any other social media platform. 

Every minute on Facebook, 400 new accounts are created. What’s more, 317,000 status updates are published, 147,000 photos are upload and 54,000 links are shared. Facebook continues to thrive in 2018, despite what the doom-mongers are saying. 

Content consumption remains on the up. The average user spends 35 minutes per day on Facebook, logging in an average of eight times. 

Regardless of who your target audience is, you can currently reach them on Facebook, and they’re unlikely to be going anywhere any time soon.

However, it’s not just the size of your potential audience that should convince you to join the 2.5 million brands running Facebook ads, it should also be the effectiveness of this platform when it’s used properly. 

There’s no better way to find your ideal customers

It’s not just that your ideal customers definitely have a Facebook account, it’s the fact that targeting them is easier than on any other platform.

Among other things, you can target your Facebook ads based on:  

• location;
• education;
• work;
• age;
• ethnicity;
• financial status;
• parental status. 

It goes deeper too. If Facebook knows about it, advertisers can target it.  You can target people based on the pages they ‘Like’ or the activities they have completed in the past. Interested in targeting people who have read Harry Potter and the Prisoner Of Azkaban’. You can! This is advertising wizardry at its finest. 

These privacy concerns might be have been flagged as worrying for users, but it’s gold for advertisers. 

These ads are effective

Considering how well targeted they can be, it might not come as a surprise to hear that Facebook ads are one of the most effective when it comes to driving sales.

In 2014, a widely-cited poll suggested that 47% of Americans regard Facebook as their biggest influencer for buying decisions. In another more recent survey, some 74% of consumers said they rely on social media to assist them with purchasing decisions. 

There is a multitude of clever strategies that Facebook marketers are using to skyrocket their returns-on-investment. The Facebook Pixel, which allows e-commerce brands to retarget previous visitors to their websites, has been an incredibly successful tool for thousands of businesses. 

The use of social proof within ads that show which of their friends ‘likes’ a brand has proven to be extremely effective. The ability to tweak Facebook ads based on the detailed analytics shown to advertisers has been widely praised too.