There are currently more than 2 million small business and entrepreneurs that advertise on popular social network, Facebook.

In a video message Facebook chief executive officer and co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg says businesses use Facebook to connect with their customers and help grow the economy.

The rise in Facebook's advertisers marks a 33% increase from the 1.5 million ads it had in July 2014, according to Reuters.

"We built Facebook to connect everyone and a really important part of that is connecting people with the businesses they care about," says Zuckerberg in the video.

"When companies can grow and innovate life gets better for all of us," he adds.

According to Zuckerberg Facebook ads are priced in an auction, and the price is not set by the company.

"We don't set a fee. People just bid what showing an ad is worth to them and then the ads get sold for the minimum price that clears the auction. In this way, we really are charging as little as we can for you to show ads.

"People almost always pay less than the ads are worth to them," he responded to one user.

The Facebook boss did not give a breakdown of the number of small business from the different regions - including Africa - that advertise on the social network.

However, the fastest areas of growth of small business advertising for Facebook are in regions of Europe-Middle East-Africa and Asia Pacific, reports Reuters.

Last year Facebook said it has 100 million monthly users in Africa.

Since launching in 2004, Facebook has grown into the world's biggest social network with 1.23 billion monthly active users.