Globally, Facebook now has 3 million businesses actively advertising. Over 70% of these are from outside the United States.

Does Facebook account for a significant portion of your own advertising efforts? Discuss.

3 million is a pretty remarkable number considering that the company only announced he 2 million milestone a year ago. In September, it was at 2.5 million.

The news comes just after the company announced that it has already accrued over 200,000 advertisers on Instagram, which is impressive itself considering how long Instagram ads have been available to all businesses (not very).

Since updating its active advertiser number to 2.5 million in September, Facebook has made a number of announcements to improve its advertising offerings.

In October, the company announced Facebook Slideshow, which creates video ads from still images. It’s aimed at marketers with slower internet connections. The format enables an advertiser to upload three to seven still images and choose a length from five to fifteen seconds.

In November, they expanded 360-degree videos to ads. These give users a virtual reality-like experience letting them view anything in the camera’s view within the video from any angle. They also provided a site for resources for creators of such videos, which includes guidelines, common questions, best practices, etc.

In January, they added features to Lead Ads including a new context card, a carousel format, and the ability to reach both desktop and mobile users. The ads were first made available to all advertisers in October following a limited launch in June. Facebook has touted a 4x reduction in cost per lead and a 54% more efficient cost per lead for different companies. With the general launch, Facebook added CRM integration, real-time response, and customizable questions. Now, the ads can do more.

The context cards are optional titles that pop up after someone clicks on a lead, but before they get to the form. This, Facebook explains, gives businesses a place to offer more details on the information people are signing up for. The carousel format lets businesses showcase three to five images and headlines before people click through to the lead form.

In early February, Facebook announced that both Facebook and Instagram now support longer reach and frequency campaigns. Marketers can now book the campaigns up to 90 days in length. The feature allows marketers to run de-duped campaigns over a longer period of time.

Last week, Facebook announced the international release of Canvas, which it describes as a new full-screen, immersive mobile ad experience, which loads “nearly instantaneously” when someone taps on a News Feed ad.

“Facebook built Canvas in collaboration with brands and agencies to achieve any objective by giving them a fully customizable space on which to build…stories,” the company said. “Advertisers can use a mix of video, still images, text and call-to-action buttons to build beautiful and effective brand and product experiences on mobile.”

“Within a Canvas, people enjoy moving through…stories easily,” Facebook said in a blog post. “They can swipe through a carousel of images, tilt to view panoramic images and zoom in to view images in detail, making the Canvas experience immersive and engaging in a way that mobile sites aren’t. And Canvas uses the same technology that makes photos and videos load quickly on Facebook, so it loads as much as 10 times faster than the standard mobile web.”

According to the company, Canvas loads as much as ten times faster than the standard mobile web. It calls the ads easy to build with no software required. Any advertiser can begin building a Canvas starting today. The tool is available in Power Editor and the Publishing Tools tab on Facebook Pages. The ads work on both Android and iOS.

As the company announced its latest milestone, it also announced a new tool for businesses to help them tell their stories with video (which we all know Facebook likes to show users more and more these days).

The company says the tool “makes it easy to create a video that shows what your business brings to the world. Because we believe the best way to tell the story of three million businesses is to empower each one to share their own.”

There’s a site here where you can go to create your own video.

“In a few steps, make a video that tells people what your business brings to the world. Every business has a story. Let’s celebrate yours,” Facebook says.

You can also see sample videos at the site.

Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings conference call in January that there are over 50 million small businesses now using pages on Facebook. Over 70% of businesses using Facebook ads are from outside of the U.S.

Do you intend to use the new video tool? Do you think Facebook’s most recent additions make a significant difference in its advertising offerings? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Images via Facebook