• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 13, 2012

SocialCode, The Washington Post Co.’s social media ad firm, has been approved by Facebook to run clients' premium ad placements on the site.
 
This new capability should allow the firm -- which helps brands and agencies understand and exploit social media -- to apply its targeting tools to sexier ad placements, ideally improving Facebook ad buys.
 
With the help of an unnamed financial services client, SocialCode said it recently observed the positive impact that premium ad placements can have on overall campaign performance.
 
Solely with marketplace placement, SocialCode initially recorded a 1.2% conversion rate for the client's Facebook app. One month into the campaign, the client deployed a “beach block” of premium ads -- or those positioned on the right hand rail of the user homepage -- which resulted in a boost in conversion rates of the “marketplace” ads at an average of 3.0%.
 
“The drastic increase in conversion rates for our campaign demonstrates the value of an integrated approach to the Premium and Marketplace ad units,” explained Laura O’Shaughnessy, CEO of SocialCode.
 
SocialCode recently confirmed hiring away 15 top engineers from social news site Digg, which was sold to Betaworks this week for a reported $500,000.
 
Those joining SocialCode’s developer team in leadership roles included Alan Lippman -- formerly Digg’s vice president of ad products -- as chief scientist, and Will Larson as director of engineering.