However, Facebook Inc. is much more than that, as today’s chart nicely illustrates.
With WhatsApp, Instagram and of course the namesake Facebook and Messenger, the company owns four of the world’s largest social media / messaging services. Facebook alone reaches more than 2 billion people per month and both WhatsApp and Messenger also passed the billion-user milestone recently.
Tencent, the Chinese company behind WeChat and Qzone might also boast a billion users in total, but still doesn’t come close to Facebook’s global footprint.
What all of the services mentioned below have in common, is their immense attractiveness to advertisers. Not only do they all boast hundreds of millions of users, but they also have the ability to target specific groups based on likes, dislikes and past behavior.
That is why social media advertising has grown immensely over the past few years. In the U.S. alone, social media ad revenue is expected to reach $17.8 billion this year, with more growth to come in 2018 and beyond.
For more information on social media advertising, including revenue forecasts for major markets, download our free report: “Digital Advertising: Social Media“.