Facebook hits a million advertisers in a month, major press event announced

Facebook has announced it has hit a major advertising milestone, with a million advertisers using the service in just 28 days, with the company also announcing a major press event for June 20.

The strong sales figures come a month after the social media giant announced revenue for the first quarter totalled $US1.46 billion, up 38% from $US1.06 billion year-on-year.

Revenue from advertising stood at 85% of that total, or $US1.25 billion, up 43% from the same quarter last year.

In turn, mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 30% of advertising revenue for the quarter.

As SmartCompany recently reported, in the display sector of the mobile ad market, publishers (including social networks such as Facebook) controlled 52% of US mobile display revenue in 2012 compared to just 39% in 2011, at the expense of ad networks that display advertising in other company’s apps and mobile sites.

Mobile display advertising in the US accounted for 39% of all mobile ads in the US during 2012, with traditional web search ads still accounting for 61% of sales.

“I know business owners like these invest their hard-earned money and time into running their companies. So today, on behalf of everyone at Facebook, I want to say thank you to them and to the over 1 million businesses like them who are active advertisers,” Facebook director of global marketing solutions, Dan Levy, said in a statement.

The news comes amid plans by the Facebook to reduce the number of types of advertising it offers its customers.

“In the next six months, we plan to streamline the number of ad units from 27 to fewer than half of that while mapping all of our ads to the business objectives marketers care about — be it in-store sales, online conversions, app installs, etc,” Facebook product manager Fidji Simo said.

Advertising remains particularly important given the company’s recent missteps in generating alternative revenue streams, the most prominent example being the weak sales of the HTC First, dubbed the “Facebook phone”.

The HTC First, the first smartphone to come pre-loaded with the widely criticised Facebook Home interface for Android, sold just 15,000 units under AT&T in the US before its price was slashed to just 99 cents on a 24 month contract.

AT&T eventually returned all unsold inventory to HTC and discontinued advertising.

Shortly before announcing the advertising growth, the social media giant announced it is holding a major press event tomorrow.

On a page with the title “June 20th Press Event: Where To Watch”, the company tells visitors to “Check back here for the live stream link at 10 a.m. [US] Pacific Daylight Time on Thursday, June 20th.”