While many studies have shown the importance of social media for SMB marketing efforts, specifically Facebook, there appears to be a population of “early adopters” that are engaged in paid opportunities on these sites. According to a new study from LSA research partner Thrive Analytics, 19% of SMBs said they have paid for social media advertising.

With 70% of the SMBs surveyed saying that they utilize Facebook for marketing efforts, the conclusion is many of those who purchase ads are doing so on Facebook. However, the vast majority of SMBs on Facebook have not done anything with Facebook Ads.

With 45+ million active SMBs and 2.5 million advertisers per Facebook’s official figures (9/15), that’s only about 5% or 6% penetration roughly speaking (not all Facebook’s advertisers are SMBs). In other words, Facebook still has a huge opportunity to convert SMBs with Facebook pages into active advertisers.

The data comes the “2016 Local Pulse Survey” of 1,116 SMBs conducted by LSA research partner Thrive Analytics. For more on the survey, click here. To access and share the graphic above, click here.

At LSA16 we will be exploring a variety of SMB issues in the marketplace including SMB advertiser churn, local media sales, the SMB product suite and we will also moderate a live panel of San Francisco SMBs. In addition, Facebook’s Joe Devoy will discuss the company’s various ad types and tools for local and its thinking about the broader ecosystem. To see the full agenda, click here.