Only 2% of Facebook’s Local Business Pages Are Using Promoted Posts

Back in May, Facebook began allowing page owners to pay to give their posts extended visibility in their fans’ news feeds. With Promoted Posts, Facebook gave business owners a way to make sure the right people see the right content- at least that’s the company’s pitch. Recently we’ve seen some page owners upset with Facebook over Promoted Posts and content visibility. They claim that changes to Facebook’s content algorithms have made their content less visible and that this is all part of Facebook’s plan to promote Promoted Posts.
Facebook says that’s simply not true. Either way, are you curious about the first six months of Promoted Posts? Just how much are page owners using the product?
Facebook has just released some figures on its initiative. According to the company, 300,000 pages have paid to promote at least one post. Facebook also said that they have reached 13 million local pages. If you do the math, you find that means just over 2% of pages have used Promoted Posts.
The company also says that 2.5 million individual posts have been promoted. That means that the average page owner who utilizes Promoted Posts has promoted a little over 8 posts. For pages in general, the receive 150 million visitors on a daily basis. Facebook says that half of them come via mobile.
In October, Facebook expanded their Promoted Posts product to individual users. Now, you don’t have to be a page to pat to promote your posts on the site. Initially, you could only promoted your individual posts if you had less than 5,000 friends. Last month, Facebook relaxed that rule. I would be interested to hear the figures on this initiative. I guess it’s simply too young of a venture for a meaningful report.