MUMBAI: Facebook announced that a vast majority of its three million active advertisers are small and midsize businesses (SMBs’). The number of advertisers is up by fifty per cent in one year. Small businesses are mobile and a million advertisers create an ad directly on mobile for Facebook. The social media giant says that the three top advertising brand categories are services, local commerce and eCommerce.

As per data shared by Facebook 70 per cent of the three million companies are from outside the US, with the fastest growing region being south east Asia. 57 per cent of people on Facebook in India are connected to small businesses.

What’s more, as of October 2015, nearly 2 million small businesses in India actively use Facebook Pages because they’re free, easy to use, and they immediately give businesses a digital and mobile strategy.  It is interesting to note that of 142 million monthly active users are in India alone, 133 million are active on mobile, facilitating over 1.99 billion interactions generated between businesses and people in India

Keeping the India market in mind, Facebook had also up the SME India Council for the first time in Asia Pacific, while an India Client Council with global advertisers was established in 2014.  The SME India Council will meet few times over the coming months to discuss progress on solutions, business ideas, discuss new successes and challenges and meet the Facebook teams.

Currently more than 50 million small businesses use Facebook's free Pages product to grow. Going by their analytics, more than one billion people on Facebook are connected to at least one business. 

To celebrate these businesses, the social media giant has also announced the development of Your Business Story, a new movie tool that makes it easy for business owners to showcase what their company brings to the world. As part of the tool, businesses are able to upload their photos from their Page, overlay with music and share "what they are in the business of" doing.