I just viewed a Facebook Insights video tutorial on John Haydon’s Social Marketing for Non Profits site. With a calm Mr. Rogers-like voice, he does a great job illustrating the level of analytics and insights available to those who buy ads or create pages on FB. I recommend it for folks who are in the business of media analytics and were not aware of this (like me).
Left me wondering how long until Facebook launches a web analytics application (like Y! or G Analytics) which allows marketers to track the engagement off-FB and into the advertiser’s site? Since marketers openly question the effectiveness of FB vs. other online direct response marketing (search, networks) in driving sales, it seems like FB would do well to go down this path. Or – for enterprise level advertisers – encourage 3rd party ad serving (Atlas, DCLK)…and/or create an API which surfaces these metrics.
It would seem that until the full impact of FB ads can be understood relative to their holistic role in the purchasing funnel, FB Insights may deliver analytics, but not quite the level of insights that are actionable for marketers.
While FB may not have arrived at the insights party yet, given their relatively recent foray into advertising on a large scale, they look to be well dressed for the occasion, judging from their progress on FB Insights functionality.
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I hope they don’t, or if they do it’s through acquisition. I like the Facebook Insights update, but it’s very basic. And too many companies have gone down the path of building their own analytics, underestimating the complexity of the problem. Google Analytics is decent because it was Urchin first, same for MSFT/Atlas.
It would be so easy for FB to allow 3rd party tags on pages – lord knows I can put all other kinds of crap on there. I hope it happens soon.