• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, May 10, 2012

New ad offerings launched by Facebook in March at its fMC conference heightened emphasis on combining owned and paid media on the social network to boost exposure. Less than 10% of a brand’s Facebook fans see content posted by a marketer, indicating that organic word-of-mouth isn’t enough to spur engagement. So much for earned media.

Now Facebook marketing specialists are catching up by expanding their own paid media services. Among the latest is Vitrue, which has started a media partner program aimed at streamlining the process of turning brand page content into ads on Facebook. It allows marketers using the Vitrue platform to choose from a group of agency partners to make ad buys based on popular posts on their Facebook pages.

At launch, the program includes Facebook Ads API partners Involved Media, Marin Software, Nanigans, Optimal,SocialCode, Spruce Media and Unified, with more social advertising firms to be added. Through Vitrue’s platform, participating brands would have the ability to flag posts that receive high engagement and immediately message media buyers to turn them into Sponsored Story ads on Facebook.

The media partners will also have access to all post-related metrics on Facebook to help identify engaging content that could be coverted into ads. While Vitrue’s platform provides analytics and reporting on paid and owned media on Facebook and other social properties, it doesn’t offer actual ad-buying capability directly. That’s where its new ad partners come in.

“As opposed to offering only one media buying solution within a social marketing platform, our Media Partner Program strategy gives brands the choice to seamlessly integrate and connect their ad systems and solutions with either an existing partner or other best-in-class options,” said Vitrue CEO Reggie Bradford, in a statement.

The company is charging an additional fee for clients to join the partner program, but the company didn’t disclose how much. Vitrue competitor Buddy Media recently introduced its own paid media service called BuyBuddy, built on social ad technology acquired through its purchase of Brighter Option -- another Facebook Ads API partner -- earlier this year.

Facebook in March extended Sponsored Story ads to its mobile properties and debuted new ad products like Reach Generator to help boost revenue in advance of its initial public offering set for next week.

Last month, the company reported first-quarter revenue of $1.06 bilion, up 45% from a year ago, but down about 6% from the fourth quarter of 2011. Facebook attributed the quarterly decline to a seasonal slowdown in ad spending following the holiday period.