Facebook Has 9 Million Advertisers But Only 2.3 ... - Business Insider

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told B.I.'s IGNITION conference that 9 million businesses use Facebook to promote themselves but only about 2.3 million of them actually pay for ads or sponsored stories. The rest are using Facebook Pages, which the social network is happy to offer free of charge, Sandberg said.

Even though most businesses are free riders, the ones paying for promotion are generating an expected $4 billion in revenues for 2011.

Until Facebook unveils its IPO in 2012, the way it actually makes its money remains murky. Facebook offers three products for advertisers: Pages, Sponsored Stories and display advertising. Only the latter two require media buys from advertisers.

"Increasingly they use those ad products to [promote themselves when they] open a new store," she said.

Sandberg also offered a charming -- and for those of us of a certain age, disconcerting -- look inside Facebook's corporate culture: "At Facebook I'm really old" compared to other employees, she said. (She's actually 42.) "I'm old enough to remember life before the web," including the time when if you wanted to do research you started in the card catalog at the local library. Apparently, Facebook has many young employees who have no memory whatsoever of time before the internet. "Every now and again Mark [Zuckerberg, the founder] says 'What was it like?' And I say 'No, I'm not going to take this from you!'"

Separately, Sandberg also gave this update on Facebook's operating costs: "Our whole company is 3,000 people. Google has twice as many job openings as we have jobs, so the difference is vast."

SEE ALSO: 9 Things Linkedin Is Telling Wall Street Right Now

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-has-9-million-advertisers-but-only-23-million-actually-pay-to-be-there-2011-12

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