This week, Omniture announced details of its plan to integrate Facebook into its Web analytics system. The full integration won’t happen until later this year, but (assuming the software works as planned), it’s a sign that social media marketers are finally starting to get what they need: third-party analytics that show them how well social media advertising works compared to other kinds of advertising. There are dozens if not hundreds of social media analytics firms and tools, but only a few companies can bridge the gap between social and the rest of what marketers do, online and offline.

The other aspect of the announcement that is interesting is that Omniture will extend its search-marketing system, SearchCenter Plus, so marketers can also buy ads on Facebook. Presumably these are the self-serve performance-based ads that populate the right side of many Facebook pages, but it may include the branded Facebook engagement ads as well.

The Omniture announcement followed on the heels of another Facebook integration announcement, by Omniture competitor Webtrends. The new Webtrends Analytics for Facebook gives marketers the ability to measure the performance of fan page tabs, applications and shares.

Measurement and analytics are going to be big buzz words for social media marketing this year. Thus far, most marketers have focused on Website traffic as the default measurement tool.

As Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer’s CEO, writes in our recent Social Media Insight Brief “Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media”:

“Clearly, site traffic can be an important barometer of consumer interest for a brand, but on its own it cannot justify heavier investment in social media.”

The more social media sites can provide the analytics to show ROI beyond site traffic, the more successful social media marketing will become.

TechCrunch reported data from comScore yesterday that Web traffic to Facebook is now nearing that of Yahoo!. The world’s largest social network has already surpassed Yahoo in monthly page views, and will soon overtake the search engine’s mark of more than 594 million unique visitors. eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson recently shed some light on Facebook’s future growth potential, revenue opportunities, and how marketers can take advantage.

eMarketer: Do you see Facebook continuing to experience its recent huge growth in the future?

Williamson: I do see significant growth potential for Facebook, especially in developing markets. I believe it is reaching saturation in its original dominant markets: the US, UK and Canada. But there are many countries where its user growth is still quite large.

Here’s one data resource that shows that:
Mapping Facebook’s Recent Global Growth Versus Rivals

eMarketer: If the site does continue to grow, can it generate enough revenue through advertising to offset the huge costs involved in supporting so many users?

Williamson: Advertising has been Facebook’s main revenue stream since its inception. But I believe that this year will be the year that we see the company opening up significant new revenue streams.

One of those will probably be virtual currency. Another might be e-commerce, in which Facebook could take a cut of sales from any person or company that sells something within Facebook.

In a few years, I believe another source of revenue for Facebook will be analytics–selling information about its users to marketers, agencies and others who are interested. Facebook is sitting on a gold mine of consumer information and I am certain it is trying to determine how to maximize the revenue potential from it–without invading its users’ privacy.

eMarketer: Do you think it’s likely that Facebook will go public anytime in the near future? Or should its focus remain on generating revenue through advertising and other streams?

Williamson: I believe that Facebook does not need to go public anytime soon. It has a deep-pocketed investor in DST, the Russian firm, and its advertising revenues are growing nicely. I expect that it will generate $605 million worldwide in ad revenue this year, up 39% over last year. If it succeeds in creating some of the new revenue streams I mentioned above, it will be doing very well.

Related:

• Facebook’s Revenue Trajectory
• Social Network Ad Spending Trends for 2010
• Students Still Find Facebook Cool
• Facebook Now Has Yahoo In Its Sites, Already Bigger In Pageviews (ComScore)
• Baby Boomers Get Connected with Social Media
• What Social Followers Want