Back in July we were the first to post about an impeding Facebook Ads API for agencies and large advertisers. Today, Justin Smith posted the latest documentation of the Facebook Ads API as provided by an unknown source. The service is just as we’d expect given that Facebook’s existing advertising platform uses JSON-encoded methods to generate CPM, CPC, and demographic data. The API methods enabled advertisers to create and modify the following: ad groups, campaigns, and individual ads.

Also included in the latest APIs is the ability to manage start and stop times of campaigns. In other words the API essentially lets partners automate the process of ad management. This means agencies and large ad buyers will be able to develop their own interfaces and even provide their own markups for ad management if they wanted. The primary benefit of the Facebook Ads API is on Facebook’s end however which will have a more efficient way for inventory to move through the system.

The easier that Facebook makes it for advertisers to get ads into the system, the quicker they can increase revenue. Ultimately there’s not much new information since we first wrote about the Facebook Ads API back in July, however you now can view the API methods available to the developers implementing the API. My guess is that the API won’t become mainstream anytime soon as the company is working directly with larger agencies for the time being.

Given the increasing number of variables within the Facebook ad platform, providing an API for developers makes a lot of sense. Being able to automate the process of increasing ad performance is huge for companies which rely on the Facebook ad platform. Zynga for example, who’s estimated to spend over $4 million a month on Facebook advertisements, can manage thousands of ads through Facebook’s API, measuring the performance and optimizing ads on the fly.

With the Facebook Ads API, the future of Facebook looks extremely bright. As I suggested the other day though, there’s very little data to suggest anything but a bright future.

Update
Facebook has corrected me on this post, to let us know that there is actually a Facebook Ads API area of the Facebook Developer Wiki, something we were never aware of. For complete details on the Ads API, you can view more information via the Ads API wiki page.

This afternoon Facebook announced a new targeting feature for advertisers: friends of connections targeting. The feature enables advertisers to target those “users whose friends are connected to” specific Pages, Events, Groups, and Applications that you currently manage. It’s an improvement upon the “connections” targeting feature that we previously wrote about. It’s an interesting feature which enables advertisers to take advantage of Facebook’s social graph.

Previously, Facebook advertisements automatically included statements about a user’s friends. This new targeting lets advertisers focus exclusively on those users though. For example, if you are a friend of mine, an advertisement for AllFacebook would say “Nick is a fan” at the bottom of the ad. The result is that advertisers will be able to more effectively monitor conversion rates on the “friend of connections” ads, something they weren’t previously able to accomplish.

While this should theoretically result in increased conversion rates, advertisers will now have metrics to verify the conversion. Another interesting use of this new feature would be promoting an external site, while using data provided by Facebook. For example I may want to promote a conference and link to the registration page, while letting the users know that their friends are already a fan of our brand.

While it would be interesting to have the ability to target content which you are not an administrator of, Facebook does not currently provide such functionality.