Facebook plans to soon change the way it structures its API partner program, assigning “preferred” status to developers in four verticals: page management, ads, insights and custom app development, according to TechCrunch sources.

Currently, Facebook has two tiers, an Ads API partner program and a Preferred Developer Consultant program through which it grants API permissions and allows companies to highlight their status with badges like the one seen right. In November 2011, the social network announced it would unify these under a single title, the Facebook Marketing API Program. By adding more verticals and categorizing developers based on the service they provide, as TechCrunch reports, Facebook could help businesses discover the type of provider they’re looking for.

Facebook started the Preferred Developer Consultants program at the end of 2009, with 14 companies. Now it has 90 preferred developers in its directory. These developers had to apply and get approved by Facebook. The most recent submission round ended in December 2011, but the social network has not yet announced the new additions. On the Ads API side, Facebook has more than 50 partners providing managed services and software tools to help businesses create and optimize ad campaigns on the site. With more of these companies cropping up and others consolidating, it will be useful to have a system in place to indicate which vendors are qualified to provide which services.

Facebook did not respond to requests for comment on possible changes to its developer programs.

At today’s fMC event in New York City, Facebook announced that Sponsored Stories and Premium ads will begin to appear in News Feed on m.facebook.com and native iOS and Android apps. This marks the first time the company has brought ads into its mobile products and is part of a significant update to its marketing and advertising products, centered around the introduction of Timeline for businesses.

Sponsored Stories in the mobile News Feed will appear similar to Sponsored Stories on the desktop News Feed, which were introduced in January. Premium ads are only available to advertisers working directly with Facebook representatives, not from the self-serve or Ads API tools.

While the introduction of Sponsored Stories to the mobile News Feed was expected, the appearance of Premium Ads in both the desktop and mobile News Feed (as opposed to their previous position on the right side of the desktop homepage) is very new. This allows premium advertisers to reach fans connected to their Page from within News Feed, even if there is no friend activity that could generate a Sponsored Story. While Premium ads in the News Feed are still relevant to the user, as they are only displayed to users who have already liked a given page, they are arguably less organic than Facebook’s past offering of Sponsored Stories in the News Feed, as they are focused on promoting content at scale, rather than friend activity on a Page.

Users who do not want to see promoted page posts in News Feed can unlike those pages. However, if a friend interacts with a page and the page is paying for Sponsored Stories, those items can show on desktop and  mobile.

Stay tuned for more coverage of today’s fMC event, and see our liveblog of the keynote presentation here.

Two more social software companies announced integration with Facebook page publishing and ad management tools this week on the heels of news that Buddy Media acquired Brighter Option to offer a platform that combines paid, owned and earned efforts.

Wildfire partnered with Adaptly on Monday to add social advertising capabilities to its suite of page management and promotion applications. Now today GraphEffect launched a new version of its social media management platform to establish more of a link between marketing and advertising, combining the Facebook Ads and Insights APIs.

These changes, like what Buddy Media has done with Brighter Option, allow businesses to see how their Facebook posts are performing and then easily choose which to amplify as paid page post ads. This is likely to encourage brands to begin prioritizing content creation ahead of traditional advertising.

We expect social media software companies to continue to consolidate. As social media marketing efforts become tied with paid advertising campaigns instead of being standalone efforts as they often have for the past few years, companies are going to be looking for a single software solution to help them manage it all. However, we can see how things might get complicated for brands that work with different agencies that use different software. These platforms will have to find ways to differentiate themselves and make it easy for brands and agencies to know which is right for them.

Social media management software company Buddy Media acquired Facebook Ads API partner Brighter Option as a way to provide a comprehensive software package for marketers, the company announced today.

Buddy Media now offers Facebook ad creation and optimization tools along with its social publishing, moderation, analytics and application software. The company says it chose to acquire London-based Brighter Option over 20 other ad partners because it wanted to buy technology and a team, not an agency.

We were impressed with Brighter’s Option’s latest iteration of the Social Ad Manager, which combines the Facebook Insights and Ads APIs. Now with integration into Buddy Media’s publishing tools, the software seems even more efficient. From the dashboard of posts, companies can select “Promote Story” to create a page-post ad campaign on Facebook (see image below). We imagine the same could be done for Twitter in the future.

Buddy Media prices its software based on usage, for example, the number of tabs a company wants to deploy. Brighter Option takes a single-digit percentage of ad spend. Buddy Media will continue to sell its software individually so companies don’t have to pay for Social Ads Manager if they have another ad provider, or they don’t have to buy the Conversation Buddy publishing tool if they only deal with paid media. However, for companies that want software solutions instead of managed services, Buddy Media now has the advantage of being a single vendor with quality offerings.

Advertisers can now target Facebook users by broad category and precise interests at the same time using the Power Editor tool, according to a company spokesperson. We’ve also learned this is available to Ads API partners.

In the traditional self-serve ad dashboard, advertisers have to choose whether to target broad categories or switch to precise interest targeting. With the Ads API or Power Editor, an advertiser can now, for example, select the broad category “expecting parents” and then narrow down that category by targeting precise interests like The Food Network. Previously advertisers could only target one or the other.

This function is currently exclusive to Power Editor users and Ads API partners. Power Editor works with spreadsheet applications like Excel to make ad creation and optimization more efficient. Advertisers working with Facebook account managers can request access to the application. (See the new targeting UI below.)

The social network introduced the option of broad category targeting in April 2011. Since then it has expanded the options available, including the ability to target Hispanics, people who have recently moved, expecting parents, iPhone users and other valuable categories. Simultaneously targeting broad categories and precise interests could be very useful for small business owners and niche marketers. However, Facebook hasn’t indicated if or when it will make this feature available to all advertisers.

Image credit No. 1: Hussein Fazal, AdParlor CEO.

Image credit No. 2 and hat tip to Aim Clear Blog, which first reported the Power Editor change.

Facebook Ads API partner Brighter Option announced an update to its Social Ads Manager tool that makes ad creation and optimization more efficient. Most notably, the company now integrates the Page Insights API to help businesses choose effective ad creative for page post ads.

Page post ads are a relatively new offering from Facebook. Instead of developing creative with a headline, body copy and image, businesses can promote posts they already made on their Facebook pages. Brighter Option now shows posts’ engagement metrics within the ad creation section, which gives advertisers more context than Facebook’s self-serve dashboard and other ad tools provide.

Brighter Option CEO Peter Goodman says part of the goal with this feature is to solve some of the problems that result when companies have different agencies doing advertising and page management. Bringing page insights to the ad builder increases efficiency and we imagine it will encourage advertisers to rethink what type of content works best in Facebook ads.

The Social Ad Manager has come a long way since we profiled the tool in 2010. The London-based company has introduced several features that make Facebook ad planning and campaign management less onerous. We liked the easy navigation between analytics and scheduling, the find-and-replace feature for making copy changes across multiples ads, the ZIP code area map and shortcuts in the creative builder. For advertisers seeking a software solution rather than managed services for Facebook advertising, Brighter Option is worth testing. The company offers a free trial of its tool.

Facebook changed its documentation sometime last week to allow advertisers to target any Open Graph actions, we discovered.

Facebook now allows Ads API partners to target users by action, even if the advertiser is not associated with the Open Graph app that created the action. Previously, anyone could target Facebook-created actions read, listen and watch, but only the developer who created a custom Open Graph verb (e.g. drink, visit or run) could target users who took that action.

This latest change to the Open Graph action targeting permissions gives advertisers more options to pinpoint consumers based on their activity on Facebook and with integrated apps. It also means developers do not have exclusivity over the verbs they create. Limiting who can target which actions is not ideal for the platform as a whole, as it could result in land-grab situations where developers try to claim verbs to maintain control over advertising. However, by opening this type of targeting to all advertisers, developers have a clear way to poach users of competing apps.

Facebook’s “Action Specs Targeting” feature is not yet available from the self-serve ad tool. It is in beta for Ads API partners only, but the partners we’ve talked to say they haven’t done much to test the new functionality. They say the documentation is confusing and the number of actions and users taking those actions is not yet at a scale worth targeting. TBG Digital CEO Simon Mansell and AdParlor CEO and Cofounder Hussein Fazal publicly spoke to these issues during one of our Inside Social Apps panels last week.

Much of the future of this type of targeting depends on Ads API partners finding the best uses and requesting improvements. These companies have a very sophisticated understanding of targeting and optimization, and they work with high-spending clients. Their findings could help advance this aspect of Open Graph, but it seems these partners need need further support and incentive from Facebook to invest time and resources toward beta testing it. Making the documentation clearer and not changing it without notifying partners would be the first step.

New Action Spec Targeting Permissions (emphasis ours):

Anybody can target any action, either built-in actions or custom actions, for any app. The currently available built in actions are og:news.reads, og:music.listens and og:video.watches. For example anybody can target the og:music.listens actions created by any application.

Old Action Spec Targeting Permissions (emphasis ours):

Anybody can target built-in actions for any app. For example anybody can target the og:music.listen actions created by any application. Only app developers or advertisers can target custom actions for their app. For example, if you create a “drove” action for your app only you can target users or friends of users who performed this action.

Facebook has quietly changed the conditions that determine whether an app is eligible to be shown as a Sponsored Story, according to the Ads API documentation.

The change reduces the amount of time required for a user to engage with an app before displaying the activity as a Sponsored Story, but shortens the window during which the activity is considered relevant.

Previously, “app used” activity was eligible to be shown to a user’s friends as a Sponsored Story if a person used an app twice in the last 28 days or for longer than 10 minutes in one session within the last 28 days.

Now when someone uses an app for at least four minutes in the last 14 days, that activity can be shown to the person’s friends as a Sponsored Story like the one seen right. The story is also eligible to be featured if the user has used the app twice ever with one of those times occurring in the last 14 days.

The new threshold seems to strike a better balance for users and developers. Four minutes in a single session is more reasonable requirement than 10 minutes since many apps and games are meant to be used in short bursts.

Reducing the relevant date range to 14 days rather than 28 means Sponsored Stories will be more timely, though it might reduce the audience a developer can target. Previously a user could have stopped playing a game or using a seasonal app two weeks ago, but the activity could still be displayed in an ad unit. This is an improvement for users, however, the “twice ever with one of those times occurring the last 14 days” stipulation might not be. This change gives developers more people to target, but might not always be representative of a user’s true activity with an app.

We imagine Facebook will continue to vary the requirements for Sponsored Stories, especially as it tests new types of ads surrounding Open Graph app activity.

Analytics and Open Graph were big topics of discussion during the “Social Game Marketing and Performance Advertising on Facebook” panel at the Inside Social Apps Conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

Ifeelgoods Co-founder and VP of Business Development Suchit Dash, AdParlor CEO and Co-founder Hussein Fazal, Kontagent CEO and Co-Founder Jeff Tseng and TBG Digital CEO Simon Mansell joined moderator AJ Glasser for the talk.

The panelists addressed the issue of game developers focusing on cost per install rather than more long term return on investment. Tseng, of analytics provider Kontagent, said it’s more important to optimize lifetime value over acquisition cost. Mansell, of Facebook ad agency TBG Digital, said many developers aren’t tracking ROI by segment, which makes it more difficult to optimize campaigns properly. Fazal, of AdParlor, said his company stresses analytics.

“We don’t like to work with a client unless they have analytics in place,” he said. “They don’t understand the value that we create because they’re not looking at the right numbers.”

Fazal and Mansell said it is too early to know what to make of Facebook’s beta test allowing advertisers to target by Open Graph activity. For example, an ad can be directed to people who read a book or watched a show.

“Our clients are quite excited to target around the play action,” Mansell said, but he noted that the API documentation on the issue is unclear. “I have a 121-person advertising company and it’s confusing for me. I’m hoping Facebook will make that more simple.”

Mansell and Fazal agreed that Open Graph does not yet have enough scale to understand how it might be an improvement over targeting by interest.

“First actions need to pick up,” Fazal said. “Developers need to create more actions.”

Fazal said Facebook should also give third-party ad providers access to pages and apps so they can better track how ads perform. He’s also frustrated with Facebook policy that prevents his company AdParlor from working with Tseng’s analytics company Kontagent to get data about user activity in apps.

“Facebook needs to leverage us [third-party partners] as much as possible,” Fazal said. “They’re understaffed for the amount of business that they’re doing.”

Mansell said he wants to see Facebook support the Open Graph verb “play” they way it has with “read,” “watch” and “listen.”

“That [playing games] is what a lot of people are going to Facebook to do,” Mansell said. “For Facebook to get users used to different verbs would be good.”

As Facebook continues to review and approve new Open Graph actions, the social network announced a number of changes affecting developers working on the platform.

Action specs – The Ads API now allows developers to create Featured Stories (previously called “Sponsored Stories”) using action specs rather than by ad creative type. This will make it easier for developers to adapt to new story types when they are launched (i.e., promoting stories about users listening to a song or earning a high score rather than simply “using an app” or “playing a game”). The old Sponsored Stories creative types will be deprecated as of May 1. The company provided more detail in a blog post here.

Test user passwords - Facebook added the option to set a test user’s password now from the Developer App to make it easier for developers to test their mobile apps. Developers can change the password of a test users from the “roles” section of the Developer App.

Access tokens – Facebook reminded developers not to share access tokens between applications to ensure the security of those tokens.

Game Developer Conference – The company will host Facebook Developer Day at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco on March 5. Conference attendees can learn more about developing social games on the platform through tutorials and discussions. More details are available here.

Page insights deprecation – Facebook will completely remove the old page insights from the API on Feb. 15.

New auth dialog – All apps will be able to use the improved authorization dialog on Feb. 15. Developers who haven’t fully configured the new dialog can disable the setting from the Developer App until the end of the month. All apps will be required to use the new dialog starting March 1.

Historical actions - Facebook has taken Open Graph action backdating out of beta. Developers can now make posts to previous dates on users’ Timelines. We covered the change in more depth here.

For more breaking changes and information about bugs, see Facebook’s Developer Blog.