As an SEO, it’s easy to get lost in a world of rankings and ranking factors when we really just want quality traffic. And the reason we get lost in rankings and ranking factors is because Google (and other major search engines) make it extremely easy to track and measure the ROI that they offer. Conversely, sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, have arguably suffered by not providing marketers the same level of tools to measure success. This March, that may have changed.

Facebook is a potential ad serving monster. With weekly traffic challenging that of Google’s and an “open graph” full of detailed demographic data for over 400 -million users, Facebook’s ability to serve targeted ads is second to none. So, why is it only a potential monster? In my opinion, one reason is poor analytics reporting. If Facebook is to become the multi-billion dollar advertising behemoth that Google is, it will need to demonstrate ROI beyond just impression and clicks.

For marketers, the Internet is a wonderful communication medium full of data gathering possibilities. Never before have they had the opportunity to so effortlessly and precisely track the success of their efforts. For the most part, they tack some tracking code on to the page they want to monitor and then sit back and watch how visitors behave. For marketers with their own pages on sites they control, this is a fine strategy. However, as soon as they begin creating content or ads for pages they don’t have complete control over, this strategy breaks down.

Facebook, however, is a medium where marketers don’t have complete control of the site they are creating content for, and the reason the typical tracking strategy breaks down is because of privacy concerns. Facebook knows your favorite sports teams, when you last ate McDonalds, and which friends “liked” that you bought that new Chevy, it genuinely tries to protect that data from the prying eyes of marketers via two safeguards. The first safeguard, illustrated below, is the requirement that developers/marketers must make their applications ask permission to gain access to user data. When a user grants access to their data, marketers are able to begin tracking behavior.

The second privacy safeguard that Facebook provides its users lies in disassociating user demographics with user online behavior. For example, if I buy an ad for “Organic Beef Diapers” targeting 24-36 year old Californians that like pottery, it would be nice to know that that my ads were being clicked twice as much by people whose favorite band is “The Internet Explorers.”  However, even though Facebook has the ability to tell me a lot about which users clicked what, it doesn’t. At this time, Facebook’s “Ads Manger” will only give me the usual ad metrics; e.g. number impressions, CPC, CPM, etc.

Given Facebook’s relationship with its users and their privacy, it’s no wonder that Facebook analytics are not as robust as they could be. However, Facebook’s growing ecosystem has taken notice of this shortcoming and is developing solutions to help marketers capture analytics data while playing inside of Facebook’s privacy safeguards.

March was a big month for Facebook analytics. In addition to Facebook stepping up their “Conversion Tracking” beta, Omniture, owned by Adobe, announced that customers will be able to “automate Facebook media buying” and track success alongside other marketing campaigns. This advancement will further Facebook’s legitimacy in the eyes of PPC campaign managers. Another announcement, this one from Coremetrics, outlines their solution for attributing web site visits from Facebook traffic. This advancement, for those concerned about what Facebook is accomplishing for their corporate web site presence, is perfect for marketing teams in need of persuading decisions makers about the value of maintaining a Facebook presence. The final announcement, from Webtrends, details their solution for gathering useful behavior data within the confines of Facebook’s privacy safeguards.

Of the three announcements, the Webtrends Facebook analytics solution is maybe the most intriguing. Using technologies already built into Facebook, Webtrends has put together a process of content creation for Facebook that allows its customers to track behavior without compromising a user’s identity. Basically, the idea is to create set custom Facebook tabs as default landing pages that contain code written in a special Facebook friendly language. 

Compared to the Coremetrics approach (sending people away from Facebook), Webtrends has created a system where marketers can be comfortable with their audience staying inside Facebook; basically saying, “Let them stay on our fan page, we can still track them.”

If recent reports are true, the Facebook ad serving monster is growing steadily. With new Facebook analytics solutions from Omniture, Coremetrics, and Webtrends, there’s further reason to believe that marketers will find increased value in Facebook advertising.