Facebook has announced on its company blog that it has surpassed one million active advertisers on the social network.

This appears an excellent announcement to make hot on the heels of the social giant’s IPO first anniversary, with 1.2 billion connections noted between people and local businesses in the EU.

Whatever you think of Facebook ads, be it from the end user or the company’s perspective, it’s clear that they certainly are working and represent good value for businesses.

But as Dan Levy, small business director at Facebook noted, for a lot of companies there’s a distinct journey companies make. “Most small business owners start off as Facebook users, then migrate to become page owners, and from there migrate to become advertisers,” he told Reuters.

“Businesses big and small are growing on Facebook and this is a very exciting milestone for us,” Carolyn Everson, Facebook VP global marketing solutions said in a statement. “Marketers can build personal relationships with their customers on the platform, at a scale which has never before been available.”

The vast majority of Facebook’s revenue, traditionally, had come from targeted adverts to users. Yet the Palo Alto behemoth is experimenting elsewhere; in particular the paid messaging service launched earlier this year asking users to shell out if they wanted to inbox someone who wasn’t in their group of friends.

Similarly, Facebook earlier this month launched hashtags in direct competition with Twitter – but they’re not the only one, as Google+ users can also use hashtags. This can be seen as an evident attempt to increase real-time marketing revenue, as well as target the second screen.

Speaking at Social Media World Forum back in March, Twitter sales director Bruce Daisley said that 40% of all tweets sent in the evening related to television.

What do you make of this news? Are you utilising Facebook ads as part of your marketing strategy, and if so are they value for money?