• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, May 31, 2012

Facebook marketing firm Nanigans has launched a new service that allows marketers to target actions shared from Open Graph apps on the social network such as “read,” “watch,” “listen,” and “play.” Facebook introduced the ability for people to use these and other embedded verbs to tell others what they’re doing with the rollout of the Timeline feature last year.

Since then, more than 3,000 Open Graph, or Timeline, apps have been rolled out from companies and brands including Spotify, Pinterest, Fandango and Foursquare.

By targeting audiences by action, a Nanigans study found campaigns can increase click-through rates 2.25 times and increase purchase rates by up to 150%. The company says its Ad Engine platform for performance-based advertising on Facebook can track ad spend through to purchases and revenue on or off of the site. It delivers 1 billion impressions a day, leading to 1.5 million ad-related actions.

Facebook doesn't yet allow action-based targeting in its Ads Manager tool, but earlier this year added "action spec" targeting through its Ads API. Read more here.