• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 4, 2011

Teaching search marketers the nuances of paid and earned media has become a focus for platform providers looking to expand offerings. Clickable debuted tools to create and track ad performance in social networks and sites. Social ActEngine rolls out as part of its Facebook Advertising Suite.

The tools feature a set of algorithms that automatically reallocate budgets and set bids for optimal performance in campaigns. They also test and prioritize each ad in the campaigns. Companies such as Marin Software and Adometry also recently introduced similar platforms.

Social ActEngine tracks performance across Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and LinkedIn, according to David Kidder, Clickable CEO and co-founder. "We think of it as the AdWords for social," he said.

Jordan Franklin, who heads social efforts at Clickable, explains that when clients log into their Clickable account the tool gives advertisers a clean view of data in the Facebook platform and provides them with many more options to change bids and build on campaigns. Clients can see the performance data in real-time. Charts are built to provide a graphical view of the numbers.

Think of Social ActEngine as an add-on to Facebook's ad platform. If Clickable clients log in through its social platform and discover one campaign outperforming another, they might want to move more of the budget from the underachiever to the overachiever -- or change a bid for an individual ad in the system.

The tool also helps advertisers on Facebook determine the lowest cost per Fan. The calculation requires taking the amount of dollars spent per day on clicks -- the cost associated with ads -- and dividing it by the number of new Fans earned from the ads.

While Clickable's Social ActEngine offers more control for advertisers looking to lower the cost per fan, the tool also can provide guidance to help determine the value of a Fan. That metric, however, depends on how well brands communicate with Facebook Fans, and whether promotions can convince consumers to move from the online page into physical stores, per Franklin.

Clickable's Facebook Advertising Suite also offers Ads Builder, which enables advertisers to create and deliver up to 8,000 ads at once from combinations of images, ad copy and target audiences. The Media and Target Libraries allow marketers to easily store and manage assets for future use with intuitive tagging and descriptions.