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Orange, Schwarzkopf, The Carphone Warehouse and Gumtree have signed up to be among the first UK advertisers on Facebook after approaching the Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions sales team about running campaigns.

Microsoft secured the deals after buying a 1.6% stake in Facebook, founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, for £115m in October.

The software and media heavyweight secured the rights to sell banner ads on Facebook around the world as part of the deal and has been brokering deals with agencies and advertisers in the past week.

Microsoft is also expected to build on its relationship with Facebook in other areas, such as mobile advertising and embedding Microsoft Live Search into the site.

Previously, there were only a handful of ad campaigns from UK advertisers live on Facebook, brokered through the social network's US sales team, prior to Facebook setting up its UK office headed by former Yahoo! commercial director Blake Chandlee.

Alex Marks, head of UK marketing at Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, said that since the deal was announced, Microsoft had received a lot of interest from firms wanting to advertise on Facebook.

He said Microsoft had no plans to hire a dedicated team to sell on Facebook, but that headcount would increase as a result of the deal. He denied that Facebook's offer will impact on Microsoft's lucrative and dominant communications tools.

Marks said: "It's right to say that Facebook is a comms platform, but despite a big growth in Facebook we haven't seen a decline in Messenger and Hotmail."

Facebook's UK team, under Chandlee, will be responsible for developing integrated ad opportunities and demonstrating how Facebook's recently launched Beacon ad platform can work for advertisers.

Chandlee has been busy putting a UK sales team in place, with most appointments expected to start in January after notice periods have been served. Chandlee's ex-colleagues Stephen Haines, previously head of agency strategy at Yahoo!, and Jon Harvey, ex-group head at Yahoo!, are expected to start at Facebook early next year.