• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, October 3, 2011

Facebook has introduced new analytics tools for marketers, including a new metric that goes beyond the "Likes" to track conversations around a brand or business. The company has also rolled out a new expanded ad format.

The new "People Talking About This" metric will appear on brand pages beneath Likes and count the number of people who have taken social actions, such as Liking, leaving a Wall post, commenting, photo-tagging or answering a question posted to a Facebook page.

"This will help marketers and Page owners understand how to make their content more engaging and shareable, which increases the reach of their messages on Facebook," read the company's announcement. "It will also help users get a sense for what Pages are relevant, engaging and interesting to them when discovering and connecting to Pages on Facebook."

Racking up Likes has become a standard objective for Facebook campaigns, but the metric has come under criticism for being too limited a tool for gauging the success of advertising efforts on the site.

Brands and agencies have also complained about the dearth of the overall analytics Facebook provides about page activity.

The expansion of analytics tools appears to be aimed at addressing those issues. In addition to total Likes and "People Talking About This," the updated Insights dashboard for marketers on Facebook will show the number of friends of fans of a page, and a page's weekly total reach -- and how much is changed from the prior week.

Citing comScore data, Facebook noted that friends of fans represent a larger set of consumers than just a brand's Fans -- 34 times larger on average for the top 100 brand ages, and 81 times larger for the top 1000. Friends of fans are also much more likely to visit a store, Web site and even purchase a product or service.

Starbucks fans and their friends, for instance, spend 8% more in stores and transacted 11% more frequently than average Starbucks customer.

To encourage third-party development, Facebook also debuted a page titled Insights API for the analytics developer community, so it can create customized solutions for clients. Webtrends, Wildfire and Context Optional are among the analytics providers that have already done so for clients, including Gatorade, Electronic Arts and Levi's.

Separately, Facebook added a new premium ad unit combining page posts with any related social actions taken by friends. When someone viewing a company's ad has friends connected to its brand page, the unit will expand at the top to show which friends like the page. The idea is to join the brand's voice with a friend's endorsement in a single unit.

Facebook said social context makes advertising more effective --leading to a 68% increase in people recalling an ad. In addition, people are twice as likely to remember the message of the ad and four times as likely to make a purchase.

The expanded analytics and new ad format come on the heels of Facebook launching a revamped profile page, an updated news feed and new Twitter-like feature called Ticker for posting updates in real-time. The company also recently began allowing any Facebook users -- not just a brand's fans -- to post messages, comments and other content on its page.