Omniture/Facebook: The Metrics Marketers Need

This week, Omniture announced details of its plan to integrate Facebook into its Web analytics system. The full integration won’t happen until later this year, but (assuming the software works as planned), it’s a sign that social media marketers are finally starting to get what they need: third-party analytics that show them how well social media advertising works compared to other kinds of advertising. There are dozens if not hundreds of social media analytics firms and tools, but only a few companies can bridge the gap between social and the rest of what marketers do, online and offline.

The other aspect of the announcement that is interesting is that Omniture will extend its search-marketing system, SearchCenter Plus, so marketers can also buy ads on Facebook. Presumably these are the self-serve performance-based ads that populate the right side of many Facebook pages, but it may include the branded Facebook engagement ads as well.

The Omniture announcement followed on the heels of another Facebook integration announcement, by Omniture competitor Webtrends. The new Webtrends Analytics for Facebook gives marketers the ability to measure the performance of fan page tabs, applications and shares.

Measurement and analytics are going to be big buzz words for social media marketing this year. Thus far, most marketers have focused on Website traffic as the default measurement tool.

As Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer’s CEO, writes in our recent Social Media Insight Brief “Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media”:

“Clearly, site traffic can be an important barometer of consumer interest for a brand, but on its own it cannot justify heavier investment in social media.”

The more social media sites can provide the analytics to show ROI beyond site traffic, the more successful social media marketing will become.