Omniture, Facebook Expand Social Media Marketing Partnership

Omniture, acquired by Adobe for $1.8 billion last year, has expanded its partnership with Facebook. Together, the companies aim to provide marketers with solutions to optimize the enormously popular social network as an effective online marketing channel.

Initially, Omniture and Facebook will focus on the ability to automate Facebook media buying and access analytics that measure customer engagement on the social networking service, although the two companies indicated that the partnership will expand even more in the future.

The closer tie builds on the Facebook (and FB apps) analytics capabilities Omniture announced in May 2009.

With the new solution, Omniture customers can now utilize the company’s new SearchCenter Plus product, essentially an enhancement of its search engine marketing management application with new functionality for purchasing Facebook Ads. Omniture customers will thus be able to compare Facebook ad campaign metrics alongside other media channels and increase their ad spend on the social network using tools they’re already familiar with.

In addition, Omniture customers can now generate reports specifically designed to understand ad effectiveness for things like Facebook Pages and applications.

Just yesterday, Eric Eldon from InsideFacebook posted a great, detailed article estimating Facebook’s current and future revenue run rate, projecting that the company could be on track to surpass $1.1 billion in 2010 (and could already have topped $700 million last year).

Partnerships like the one with Omniture are a great way for Facebook to appease marketers who have to date been hesitant to make a substantial investment in marketing on the social network as long as they have to learn new ways of setting up campaigns and can’t effectively track the success of those initiatives.