• by Mark Walsh , December 7, 2011

Buddy Media and comScore are partnering to provide mutual clients improved measurement for social marketing campaigns. The move combines the former’s social media marketing tools with comScore’s audience-tracking service geared to social media. 

Under their agreement, the companies have agreed to integrate comScore’s panel-based data into the Buddy Media product suite to allow “seamless social marketing optimization and performance measurement.”

Besides bolstering their own social media properties, the joint offering promises to help clients gauge the impact of “earned media” through metrics such as reach and frequency, demographics, online behavior and benchmarking of competitive brands in the social landscape.

Buddy Media clients will still be able to get its analytics free as part of its social suite, but now have the option to upgrade to the premium service that includes comScore measurement.

In a blog post today, Buddy Media CEO Mike Lazerow pointed out that the alliance with comScore for now is focused on Facebook. Specifically, it “will help show the result of the social engagement and subsequent impressions on Facebook that happens for free on a company’s Pages, inside the stream of fans and their friends as well as the effect of paid ads, sponsored stories and Facebook’s other current and future ad products,” he wrote.

He also noted the initiative is aimed at big brands, requiring clients to have at least 500,000 Facebook fans “to make the data actionable and relevant.” Over time, the goal is to extend the combined service to Twitter and other social networks.