Facebook marketing software company Involver today introduces a new application programming interface to allow marketers to optimize their Facebook ad campaigns based on post-click engagement.

With the Engagement Optimization API, Involver apps can pass optimization data to the customer’s ad platform of choice. We’ve seen a number of ad providers and app management companies partner to create unified products that enable this type of optimization, but it often requires brands and agencies to change their software or service providers. Involver says it can provide the same optimization features while being agnostic to which ad provider a customer wants to use. Facebook ad partners Marin, Unified and SocialCode have already integrated the new API.

“We want to change the way this market operates,” Involver VP of Marketing Roland Smart says. “We believe things need to become more technology-driven and [social marketing tools] should interoperate with each other.”

When businesses develop applications using Involver’s Social Markup Language, they can get parameterized URLs so each Facebook ad can include unique click tags. Involver assigns a score to every interaction within an app — watching a video, filling out a form or claiming a coupon, for example. Involver’s system tallies that score and returns anonymized, aggregated data for each ad so that ad platforms can make decisions accordingly.

“We’re not telling ad platforms how to optimize,” Smart says. Involver simply delivers the data in a way that is Facebook-compliant.

Smart says the Engagement Optimization API can also be used beyond ads to provide insights for email marketing campaigns or posts across different social networks.

Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers with access to the Ads API can enter into a referral agreement with Involver for access to the Engagement Optimization API. This move could serve Involver well if more ad providers sign on. Instead of investing in acquiring a single ad company as Buddy Media and others have, Involver can work with several at a time. However, it remains to be seen whether the market will continue to consolidate as it has been or if Involver’s API approach can disrupt that.

Buddy Media today announced its new BuyBuddy platform for managing Facebook advertising campaigns.

BuyBuddy is the result of the social media management software company’s acquisition of Facebook Ads API partner Brighter Option in February. Buddy Media has integrated the advertising product with its page management tools to create the type of unified system that large brands are looking for to make decisions and track success on social platforms.

Facebook has been shifting its advertising model away from traditional display ads toward one where brands promote page posts and user activity. This new emphasis on content is what led Brighter Option to become the first company to combine the Ads API and Insights API so businesses could easily see how posts were performing and create ads accordingly. Ten days later, Buddy Media announced it had acquired the company.

BuyBuddy CEO and founder Peter Goodman says today’s announcement is more than just a name change. (Goodman retained a CEO title in the acquisition.)

“We have integrated [Buddy Media and Brighter Option] products to work more in harmony,” he says. “This also allows us to leverage more information Buddy has on their end and bring in more of Buddy’s proprietary statistics.”

For example, Buddy Media tracks conversions off-Facebook and generates some of its own engagement metrics for the content brands share through the platform. Bringing content marketing and content advertising into a single system will allow advertisers to better optimize their campaigns for different actions.

“What consumers engage with drives a brand’s paid and owned strategy,” Buddy Media CEO Mike Lazerow says. He adds that online content marketing could also help inform what brands do beyond Facebook, “What becomes a TV ad is an extension of what people respond to in the social sphere.”

Lazerow also shared the following statistics about BuyBuddy:

• 1,000 clients with users in 91 countries
• 1 million clicks per day (90 million total) in Q1 2012, up from 54.1 million total clicks generated in Q4 2011
• 127 billion impressions in Q1 2012, up from 92 billion in Q4 2011
• 1.6 million total ads created in Q1 2012, up from 1.2 million Q4 2011
• Increased CTR by 90 percent and reduced cost per click by 45 percent for Work the World
• Helped Great British Chefs achieve an average clickthrough rate of .07 percent versus the Facebook benchmark of .02 percent

A mobile Facebook application’s page topped our list of growing pages this week, as well as several sports-related pages, musician pages and popular movie pages. Pages on our list this week grew from between 407,800 to 3 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

#	Name	Total Likes	People Talking	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1	Facebook for Ever…	80,790,898	2,818,833	+409,717	+3,094,252
2	Neymar Jr. Oficial	4,445,814	192,932	+57,585	+994,630
3	Titanic	22,183,616	929,544	+116,079	+972,265
4	Adele	27,024,951	768,499	+100,039	+845,502
5	LMFAO	16,163,504	670,358	+105,064	+672,273
6	Eclipse	5,109,773	24,133	+3,285	+668,451
7	Cristiano Ronaldo 7	1,008,868	22,920	+660	+650,258
8	The Simpsons	49,359,384	698,323	+74,991	+612,437
9	Will Smith	30,236,479	542,234	+66,896	+582,162
10	Breaking Dawn	5,637,272	235,682	+33,741	+577,535
11	Bruno Mars	22,524,923	483,186	+69,259	+523,922
12	Shrek	24,984,423	451,007	+58,978	+497,385
13	Harry Potter	45,153,224	679,188	+56,735	+486,619
14	Samsung Mobile USA	4,753,967	493,589	+52,436	+461,300
15	Resident Evil 5	655,578	15,711	+177,775	+455,448
16	Pitbull	19,107,971	648,436	+60,939	+449,386
17	Jeremy Lin	954,881	552,606	+34,979	+438,508
18	Real Madrid C.F.	27,425,705	1,507,348	+47,111	+426,426
19	FC Barcelona	30,127,581	1,245,044	+54,251	+420,084
20	Snoop Dogg	17,334,450	468,430	+49,096	+407,855

Facebook for Every Phone grew by more than 3 million Likes during the past week. Users of Facebook’s feature phone app are prompted to Like the page when they log in. Sports pages, specifically football clubs and stars, were very popular. Footballers Neymar Jr. Oficial and Cristiano Ronaldo, as well football clubs Real Madrid C.F. and FC Barcelona made the list with growth in the hundreds of thousands. These pages post copious photos and videos related to game activity, rallying fans around the team.

Movie-related pages continue to be very popular, even when they don’t post very frequently. These pages are ready have a tremendous fan base, thus a single post generates a lot of activity. For example, a video on the “Eclipse” page received tens of thousands of Likes and a video on the “Titanic”  page received more than 2,500 comments.

Musicians continue to have momentum on Facebook. Adele, LMFAO, Pitbull and Snoop Dogg made the top 20 this week. These artist pages post photos and other info from tours or performances.

Finally, the popular TV show “The Simpsons” continues to see growth on page based on a combination of popularity and frequent posts, and the Samsung Mobile USA page is currently giving away phones and other related prizes. The Samsung page seems to be running Facebook ads — including premium logout ads — to get new fans.

Facebook recently relaunched its “Locations” app that allows users to search directly from a company’s page to find business locations near them.

The feature, which helps organize corporate and local pages, had to be redesigned to fit the new Timeline layout. The Locations app is only available to select brands working directly with Facebook. A spokesperson from the social network could only tell us that pages have to ask Facebook to enable the app, but she could not provide details about what makes a company eligible for the feature.

Facebook’s Locations app first appeared in August 2011 as part of a limited private test of parent-child page management tools. Since then we’ve had a number of readers inquire about when the feature would be available publicly, but it seems Facebook is reserving this for select partners for now.

Corporations like Starbucks, Macy’s and Home Depot are among those with the Locations tab, but it’s unclear whether companies have to make a certain size advertising spend to qualify or simply be well-known. Businesses with access to a Facebook account representative or working with one of Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developers certified in Pages should connect with those contacts to request access to the app. Other businesses will have to develop their own store locator applications.

Facebook’s native Locations app overlays store information on a Bing map within a tab on a company’s page. The map defaults to a tight radius around the user’s current location, but refreshes with additional results when users re-orient the map. Users can also search by city, state or zip code. The tab is not available from Facebook’s mobile site or applications.

Partners with access to the feature can manage their corporate and local pages using the Pages API and a basic admin interface. Hearsay Social, which was initially involved with Facebook in developing the management system, provides additional features and regulatory compliance for companies with both corporate and local pages. Hearsay CEO Clara Shih says her company was not involved in the latest update to the Locations app, though customers including 24 Hour Fitness use it. She did not have any information about how companies outside of her customer base could get access to the feature.

Here are links to a number of pages’ Location tabs:

• Starbucks
• Macy’s
• 24 Hour Fitness
• Equinox
• Lowes
• Home Depot
• Red Lobster
• Safeway
• Toys-R-Us
• Subway
• Quiznos
• Baskin-Robbins
• Regal Cinemas
• Ann Taylor

Facebook’s mobile application for feature phones topped our list of the fastest growing Facebook pages by Likes this week. There were plenty of movie and music pages, as well as Converse, “The Simpsons” and others.

Pages on our list this week grew from between 382,200 to 3.1 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

#	Name	Total Likes	People Talking About	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1	Facebook for Ever…	77,696,642	2,280,034	+479,066	+3,197,474
2	Converse	29,512,887	397,693	+40,547	+2,065,672
3	Titanic	21,211,346	1,743,131	+130,778	+1,117,928
4	Step Up Movie	11,738,260	185,637	+8,156	+1,100,743
5	Adele	26,179,444	941,052	+106,249	+822,724
6	The Simpsons	48,746,943	869,740	+79,345	+665,588
7	Will Smith	29,654,312	732,527	+82,076	+611,618
8	Eclipse	4,441,322	26,107	+220,813	+598,822
9	Harry Potter	44,666,605	1,001,687	+92,337	+575,365
10	Breaking Dawn	5,059,737	225,595	+140,838	+544,698
11	Shrek	24,487,036	567,809	+62,927	+507,066
12	Bruno Mars	22,000,999	582,132	+66,426	+493,178
13	Facebook	65,532,191	548,579	+57,599	+469,399
14	Resident Evil 5	655,578	15,711	+177,775	+455,448
15	Jeremy Lin	954,881	552,606	+34,979	+438,508
16	Snoop Dogg	16,926,591	691,671	+54,131	+419,538
17	Pitbull	18,658,579	715,754	+57,536	+409,857
18	Adam Sandler	30,249,552	502,523	+49,626	+388,941
19	Avatar	29,900,281	558,802	+45,549	+386,526
20	Nicki Minaj	18,205,858	348,512	+49,549	+382,039

Facebook for Every Phone was at the top of our list, growing by almost 3.2 million Likes. The mobile app recently got an update and users are given an option to Like the page when they log in. Converse repeated its formula from last week, posting plenty of photos, including an historic shoe. “The Simpsons” appeared to grow based on its general popularity.

Films that had pages that grew significantly either made the list because they’re in theaters and/or promoting theatrical releases, or due to what appeared to be page consolidations. “Titanic” is currently in theaters, Will Smith is promoting his upcoming movie, as is Adam Sandler; other film pages showed no recent activity and appeared to be consolidated.

Musicians this week included regulars like Adele and Bruno Mars, as well as others who made the list due to a surge in popularity from touring and frequent posting. For example, Snoop Dogg recently performed in a well-received concert alongside a hologram of deceased rapper Tupac. Pitbull is also on tour and promoting his work on a movie soundtrack.

Facebook today officially introduced its Preferred Marketing Developer program with 141 new partner companies.

The PMD program combines the Preferred Developer Consultant and Marketing API programs to create a unified certification process for companies that build marketing tools on top of the Facebook platform. Partners will receive badges based on their qualifications in page management tools, ad management tools, app development and insights products.

This change will help brands, agencies and others navigate the growing ecosystem of companies selling software and services related to Facebook marketing.

Facebook includes 232 companies based in 35 countries in its program. People looking for one of these tools or services can use an improved directory that includes new filters for type of business model and customers they serve. (See right.)

Companies in the PMD program get additional support from Facebook platform representatives, but generally do not get early access to features. Some PMDs are invited to participate in beta tests, but doing so requires developers to complete a number of tasks and provide required feedback. If they don’t, they can be suspended from future beta tests for 90 days.

Facebook first announced that it would bring its preferred developers and Ads API partners under a single program in November 2011. Last month we learned details about the four categories Facebook would assign badges for. Before today, there were about 90 preferred developers and 50 Ads API partners providing managed services and software tools to help businesses create and optimize campaigns on the site. When the program launched in 2009, only 14 companies were included.

Developers can learn more about the program and apply here.

Converse shoe company topped our list of the fastest-growing Facebook pages this week. There were several movies, musicians, brands such a Target and Walmart, a few games, and a few sports–related pages comprised the rest of the list.

Pages on our list this week grew from between 285,200 to 3.3 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Talking About	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Converse	27,447,210	147,681	+840,161	+3,388,098
2.	Step Up Movie	10,637,515	163,693	+344,929	+942,550
3.	Titanic	20,093,413	1,163,678	+186,181	+776,244
4.	LMFAO	15,116,759	858,346	+44,028	+588,567
5.	Gabriel García M…	1,266,812	39,848	+99,656	+508,186
6.	Resident Evil 5	655,578	15,711	+177,775	+455,448
7.	Adele	25,356,720	370,641	+144,493	+447,608
8.	Jeremy Lin	954,881	552,606	+34,979	+438,508
9.	The Simpsons	48,081,353	472,415	+120,916	+428,449
10.	Target	10,951,726	406,182	+49,372	+391,328
11.	Nemo	8,994,798	384,932	+64,534	+385,154
12.	One Direction	4,553,606	523,134	+64,165	+338,499
13.	Texas HoldEm Poker	60,123,032	549,424	+36,533	+329,525
14.	Walmart	14,707,249	456,059	+48,667	+310,030
15.	FC Barcelona	29,326,949	957,956	+64,276	+309,617
16.	Simpsons	2,814,750	353,210	+15,940	+308,609
17.	I ♥ THE WEEKEND	7,147,466	360,160	+7,301	+294,777
18.	Halil Sezai	977,670	28,812	+51,444	+288,540
19.	Samsung Mobile USA	3,940,603	333,818	+38,392	+288,078
20.	Avatar	29,513,754	345,098	+70,888	+285,194

Converse grew tremendously over the course of a few days, possibly as the result of a page post ad. The page shared a photo of a 1917 model of one of its shoes. The photo received 29,000 Likes and about 1,500 shares. Converse typically gets a few hundred or thousand Likes on its posts.

Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel García Marquez saw a new surge in Likes and engagement with photos that include quotes in English and Spanish.

Movie pages on the list seemed to be the result of page consolidations, although the recent re-release of “Titanic” in 3-D has kept the page on our list for several weeks now. Popular artists LMFAO and Adele, as well as United Kingdom boy band One Direction and Turkish singer Halil Sezai also made the list.

As we mentioned, the rest of the list included a few sports pages — basketball player Jeremy Lin and football club FC Barcelona, which recently started writing its posts in multiple languages. “The Simpsons” continues to grow, especially after revealing the true location of the show’s fictional hometown. Samsung, Target and Walmart have grown as the result of Sponsored Story campaigns.

Facebook appears to be testing a consolidated content publisher on pages, giving new prominence to videos and events while hiding the Questions feature behind a drop-down menu.

The publisher is the area from which page owners make posts to their fans. With the initial rollout of Timeline for pages, the publisher included options to post a status, photo, question or milestone. Milestones are posts that get larger placement on Timeline to commemorate important events or achievements. One problem with the old publisher was that it wasn’t clear that to upload a video, page owners had to click “photo.” See below.

Now the publisher features three sections: status, photo/video and event/milestone+. When page owners click event/milestone, they will see options to create an event, share a milestone or ask a question. (See below.) This makes event creation much simpler than before, when it could take several clicks to add a new event, but it makes the Questions feature much less noticeable. It’s unclear whether Facebook is trying to discourage page owners from using Questions, but its placement suggests it’s a lower priority for the company.

Although only certain partners have access to Facebook offers for now, we are told the ability to create an offer will soon be available from the publisher. We do not know how much prominence the feature will get when it rolls out.

The Facebook publisher has gone through a number of iterations both for users and for pages over the years. The social network seems to go back and forth between offering more or fewer options in the space. At one point the tool included third-party apps under a drop-down menu, but then Facebook eliminated the feature citing low usage. Events were added to the publisher in 2009, but removed a year later. We can likely expect more tinkering with the publisher this year as Facebook tries to find a balance between streamlining the user interface and making people aware of all the options available to them.

It’s worth noting that when page owners choose the “use Facebook as a page” feature, they see an older version of the homepage publisher, which includes separate options for links and videos. Some time in the past few months, the social network grouped photos and videos together, as well as status and links, but it did not update this less frequently used aspect of the site seen below.

Hat tip to AllFacebook for first making us aware of the change.

Our list of the fastest growing Facebook pages by number of Likes this week was a mixed bag of pages related to TV, movies, tech companies, games, sports and brands. It appears some brands, Walmart and Target in particular, got a lift from Easter promotions.

Pages on our list this week grew from between 292,400 to 3.2 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Talking About	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	The Simpsons	47,652,904	337,172	+37,662	+3,264,352
2.	Apple Inc.	5,855,919	32,925	+73,827	+1,016,309
3.	Cricket Australia	1,150,349	9,792	+132,108	+624,631
4.	LMFAO	14,528,186	1,049,477	+116,331	+563,759
5.	Official HEROES Page	3,263,359	8,149	+917	+515,977
6.	Target Style	1,433,791	495,083	+7,832	+500,171
7.	Nutella	15,027,759	73,908	+74,867	+481,838
8.	Resident Evil 5	655,578	15,711	+177,775	+455,448
9.	Get Rich or Die T…	553,602	165	+115,214	+451,521
10.	She’s The Man	657,229	1,337	+140,481	+450,828
11.	Jeremy Lin	954,881	552,606	+34,979	+438,508
12.	Titanic	19,317,168	732,340	+92,875	+408,387
13.	Diggy	1,680,993	22,399	+23,517	+379,169
14.	Stardust	366,361	153	+54,254	+363,888
15.	Intel	8,591,627	248,692	+64,708	+354,760
16.	Walmart	14,397,215	362,694	+38,738	+347,732
17.	Texas HoldEm Poker	59,793,504	553,414	+46,132	+324,450
18.	Blades of Glory	359,371	346	+64,870	+316,225
19.	BlueStacks	825,253	288,952	+61,289	+293,881
20.	Forever Alone	2,135,968	298,842	+27,074	+292,439

“The Simpsons” topped our list for the second week in a row.  There were a pair of tech companies, Apple Inc. and Intel, that made the list, as did the Android app player for Windows PC, BlueStacks. Some sports pages, Cricket Australia and Jeremy Lin, grew by posting info related to their games. A few musicians who are currently touring made the list, LMFAO and Diggy.

A few game-related pages were led by Resident Evil 5. Four movie pages that appeared to be the result of page consolidations also made the list. “Titanic,” which is currently playing in 3-D theaters, came in at No. 12 on our list in part because of an ad campaign that promoted a Facebook event for the film’s release.

Finally, it appears that some brands benefitted from the shopping rush during Easter. Specifically, Target Style posted copious Easter-related photos, and Nutella and Walmart marketed their products in a holiday vein, too. Rounding out the list was Internet meme site  Forever Alone.

“The Simpsons” topped our list of the fastest growing Facebook pages this week. There was also “Titanic,” the band LMFAO, several sports stars, a few blog-related pages, Miracle-Gro and Android app player for Windows PC BlueStacks.

Pages on our list this week grew from between 285,000 to 1.9 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Talking About	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	The Simpsons	44,388,546	416,148	+835,279	+1,913,849
2.	LMFAO	13,964,422	2,327,809	+136,306	+1,574,657
3.	Dwyane Wade	5,206,525	34,869	+2,401	+709,534
4.	I ♥ THE WEEKEND	6,606,346	668,306	+55,773	+539,287
5.	Resident Evil 5	655,578	15,711	+177,775	+455,448
6.	Last Day of School	6,312,351	661,527	+35,405	+441,777
7.	Jeremy Lin	954,881	552,606	+34,979	+438,508
8.	Chicken Soup for …	525,922	5,512	+5,686	+418,915
9.	Mc Lovin	4,403,756	482,270	+34,748	+413,329
10.	Forever Alone	1,843,527	479,678	+38,449	+399,371
11.	The Truman Show	368,284	358	+113	+364,700
12.	BlueStacks	589,748	266,681	+63,643	+316,351
13.	Miracle-Gro	1,121,750	686,078	+29,902	+313,355
14.	Texas HoldEm Poker	59,469,048	538,264	+47,177	+307,692
15.	Titanic	18,899,103	617,864	+33,334	+296,471
16.	Target	10,322,110	404,038	+7,030	+295,323
17.	Enemy at the Gates	307,448	242	-72	+291,809
18.	Nemo	8,410,373	389,243	+27,081	+290,031
19.	I dont care how o…	863,169	364,008	+20,399	+287,133
20.	ThaiMarketing	480,837	455,786	+22,077	+285,040

As mentioned, “The Simpsons” topped our list with almost 2 million new Likes. A few other movies made the list as a result of what appeared to be page consolidations, as the Likes spiked tremendously over a period of a few days. In the case of Nemo, an updated cover photo seemed to generate activity on the page. Then, “Titanic” was very popular; the page is ripe with all manner of promotions related to the upcoming 3D re-release of the film.

The band LMFAO was second on the list; during the past week the page shared several popular events, including awards nominations, media appearances, a band anniversary and President Obama singing one of their songs. There were two athletes who rode their popularity to our list, Dwyane Wade and Jeremy Lin. There were some fun, unofficial pages that made the list, including I ♥ THE WEEKEND, Forever Alone and I dont care how o… These are often humorous and inspire high engagement by users.

BlueStacks, an Android app player for Windows PC, makes its first appearance on the PageData charts this week. The beta version of the app just went live this week. Miracle-Gro continued to be popular, probably due to its FarmVille integration, since there was no apparent reason for growth on the page alone.