Number of active advertisers on Facebook 2016-2020

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.