• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 11, 2013

With more advertising on Facebook shifting to mobile, social media marketing firm Nanigans said it has extended its measurement and ad optimization tools for Facebook campaigns from the desktop to mobile.

Whether or not a consumer downloaded the app is not always the best indicator of what that consumer likes. So often, apps are downloaded and used once, only to then drown in a sea of rarely used apps. When clients run app install ads on Facebook, they can now use Nanigans’ AdEngine platform to track in-app actions like purchases and items added to shopping carts to automate future ad buys targeting profitable customers. Until now, advertisers could only see the impact of their ad spend on app installs but not post-install activities.

Marc Grabowski, COO, Nanigans, said, “It allows advertisers to see the true value of those users over the course of time, so when the bidding is adjusted, they can pay more for their users.” The platform allows companies to keep track of their most important consumers and ultimately keep them. 

Other features of the platform include real-time analytics and an algorithm that is updated every three minutes, which Grabowski says is faster than Facebook's, which updates its algorithms every 5-15 minutes. This allows advertisers to serve better ads (and pay the right price) in real-time based on how their consumers are using the app.

This optimization process is automated, but Grabowski says the human aspect is not lost. He says that humans can see why the algorithms are changing every three minutes and that they can override the changes is necessary. It might seem insignificant, but it’s a small win for humans in the Humans vs. Machines debate. 

Nanigans said more than 20 developers are adopting its mobile ad solutions for Facebook including Fab.com, TinyCo and Wooga. During its fourth quarter conference call last week, Facebook said app install ads, launched in October, were used by 20% of the top grossing iOS apps, and that the social network was the leading driver of awareness for new app downloads.