Omniture Adds Facebook Ad Data

Omniture is adding Facebook advertising data to its marketing software, a move that could pave the way for more ad dollars to flow to the social network.
 
Omniture and Facebook have worked to link the social net’s ad platform with Omniture’s marketing dashboard. This will allow advertisers using Omniture SearchCenter Plus to compare their Facebook campaigns with those running on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. The software lets marketers automate their Facebook ad buys based on their performance.
 
The expected result is that Facebook will become a bigger part of the online ad mix, according to Josh James, gm of Omniture, which is owned by Adobe.
 
“One of the fascinating things about Facebook is [that] it’s one of the few ad platforms that rivals search,” he said.
 
With the volume of ad inventory on Facebook and its ability to target, advertisers can use the social network as an alternative to Google, James said.
 
The integration constitutes a further linking of Facebook data with Omniture, which boasts that its customers represent 25 percent of global ad spending. Last year, Omniture added application analytics for brands.
 
Facebook’s meteoric growth — it now boasts over 400 million members — has made it a must-buy for many advertisers. According to Inside Facebook, the company is on track to generate over $1 billion in revenue this year, up from $600-700 million in 2009. Inside Facebook pegs the social net’s performance advertising business as the biggest portion of its revenue.
 
“Search gets more and more expensive all the time,” James said. “The great thing about this is when [advertisers] find any source of advertising that has a large inventory that rivals the immediate results of search, there’s uncapped budgets for that.”