Omniture and Facebook have teamed to provide online marketers tools to optimize Facebook as a marketing channel.

These include an automated media buying process as well as a single dashboard to plan, deliver and measure campaigns. Using Omniture's toolset, marketers can compare Facebook ad campaign metrics alongside other media channels.

This ability is critical as marketers are finding it ever more important to engage interested customers on Facebook and promote the most relevant content, promotions, products and services, Omniture says. (via MediaBuyerPlanner).

Reporting Ties to Facebook Ad Effectiveness

The partnership also allows Omniture customers to generate reports specifically designed to understand ad effectiveness for some of the unique elements of Facebook, such as Facebook Pages and applications.

The partnership builds on the Facebook analytics and Facebook application analytics capabilities Omniture announced last year.

Facebook Ad Spending to Surpass MySpace

eMarketer predicts that Facebook will easily surpass rival MySpace in terms of ad revenue this year, with Facebook expected to bring in $605 million in ad revenue and MySpace nabbing just $385 million.

The social networking site will account for nearly 25% of all social network ad spending this year, up from 20% in 2009. Total social network ad spending is expected to be $2.2 billion this year - an increase of 3.9% from last year - with $1.2 billion spent in the U.S, eMarketer says.

Eric Eldon, in his Inside Facebook blog, predicts the social networking site will bring in far greater ad revenue. Eldon writes that Facebook already reached between $600 million and $700 million for 2009, and that Facebook will be a multi-billion company within the next few years.