• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 20, 2012

Facebook continues to build out its list of partners supporting its ad exchange. Simpli.fi will become one of the next to announce its agreement. It will bring 3,000 campaigns to Facebook Exchange (FBX) next week. The company has been testing the system with brands on the social site for about a month.

Facebook's list of companies that have successfully integrated technology and launched on the Facebook Exchange (FBX) platform, the company's real-time bidding (RTB) system, ranges from Adroll to Criteo to DataXu to Triggit to Turn and Xaxis.

Frost Prioleau, Simpli.fi co-founder and CEO, said the deals represent another step, making it more compelling for search marketers to jump into programmatic display, a tactic that many might not know a whole lot about. Search marketers who are already doing social should be very comfortable with this offering, but others might have a learning curve.

"For the industry, the combination of true keyword-level search retargeting and FBX inventory will accelerate blurring the lines between search and display," Prioleau said. "Now search marketers, and other online marketers, can target users based on search intent across a vast new pool of brand safe FBX inventory. This is especially helpful for high-value, low-supply keywords, such as 'car insurance'."

For Facebook, Prioleau said, it represents a great opportunity to increase ad revenue. Strategically, it enables Facebook to marry search intent data with their inventory to improve the value, similar to the way site retargeting does.  

Chango also announced a deal Monday with Facebook, but Prioleau quickly pointed to the differences. He called Simpli.fi a "true transparent platform, as opposed to a network that arbitrages media, and we show exact media costs, data costs, platform costs, and performance on each keyword, domain, and more."

Aside from keyword-level search retargeting data, the company also supports site retargeting and CRM targeting to FBX, along with an API where clients can upload and manage campaigns in bulk, which is important to many search marketers.

When I asked how search data will support content marketing on Facebook, Prioleau said site retargeting provides the best ROI of any display targeting tactic. Like search, site retargeting volume and reach is limiting, so the solution becomes finding ways to expand the pool of users to whom an advertiser can target. That might include content.

Prioleau said content will drive better search engine optimization (SEO) rankings, which will drive more users to an advertiser's site for site retargeting. Content also drives traffic directly to the destination. Search retargeting also can increase the pool of available users for site retargeting, as driving highly qualified consumers to an advertiser's site. He also said marketers should consider CRM targeting, which also can increase the site retargeting pool.