The investment from AmEx is a big endorsement of Clickable’s solutions, which are integrated into the financial giant’s OPEN platform, providing financial and marketing tools for small and midsized U.S. businesses. In the past year, Clickable has brought OPEN companies comprehensive search marketing platform SearchManager and YourBuzz, which offers a breakdown of brand-related social media activity (including review sites) the ability to instantly respond to consumer comments and comparisons against competitors’ social activity.

Last week, Clickable bolstered its Facebook Advertising Suite through the introduction of the Social ActEngine, which uses a complex algorithm to reallocate budgets to optimize bids on the most engaging and effective campaigns an advertiser is running on the social network. The Social ActEngine joined four other tools added to the Facebook Advertising Suite this year, including a scalable ad builder, media and target libraries, an ad rotator and integration of Facebook engagement metrics with Clickable’s proprietary conversion tracking.

The chief purpose of the funding appears to be building out staff, as Clickable has slew of positions open on its jobs board.

Hence why Clickable has added some serious automation tools to its Facebook Advertising Suite, which was launched back in January as part of its holistic Clickable Pro campaign management platform. The new Social ActEngine uses a complex algorithm to reallocate budgets to optimize bids on the most engaging and effective campaigns. In addition Facebook bids can be automated alone and the Social ActEngine tests and prioritizes ads within campaigns to ensure efficiency and optimized performance.

The ActEngine joins four other new tools added to the Facebook Ad Suite this year:

• Ads Builder allows advertisers to create and deliver up to 8,000 ads at the same time using combinations of images, copy and target audiences.
• Media and Target Libraries that  allow marketers to optimize campaign performance by stored assets with intuitive tagging .
• Ad Rotation automates delivery of ad variations.
• Integration of Facebook engagement metrics and Clickable’s proprietary conversion tracking.

Come take a tour of the full Facebook Advertising Suite with this video:

The paid search solution is being offered with a 15-day trial and $200 in credit. A retailer can easily set up a new advertising or expand an existing to one through Clickable’s reach, including mobile advertising through Google AdWords. A dedicated specialist oversees every merchant account and assists in conversion tracking setup, account benchmarking, goal-setting, keyword review, custom reporting, recommendations and more. Clickable also offers analytics for tracking performance along the conversion funnel, from keywords to final sale.

Clickable also powers the SEM tool for American Express OPEN, a division of the financial services company that enables Internet services for small businesses.

Personally I don’t see why short people who own companies get all the attention — tall people who run businesses have issues too, like high overhead…. Ho, ho, I love mixing a business pun with a little grammar humor! I bet you almost laughed yourself into a comma.

Anyway, American Express isn’t even running for anything (though I’m sure the company has its fingers in many pockets) and they’ve teamed up with search manager Clickable to streamline search marketing for small business owners. Way to get into the spirit!

American Express OPEN, which offers payment cards and financial services for small businesses, has introduced the Clickable-powered SearchManager, a one-stop shop for access to major search engine services such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft AdCenter and even Facebook Ads.

In addition to a centralized, straightforward dashboard, SearchManager gives continual campaign analysis beyond metrics, offering advice for optimizing ad copy. The add-on SearchManager Assist introduces a strong yet sensitive PPC consultant to help or manage a campaign.

AmEx is offering a 30-day free trial, so come and get it, small business owners! Tall business owners, stand back and bend over.

Taking advantage (dirty!) of the Facebook Ads API, Clickable announced that as of April 12 its Pro service will manage pay-per-click Facebook ads, as well as track conversions and ROI, alongside major search engine campaigns. Search marketers will be able to create and upload pay-per-click ads in bulk.

Clickable’s Facebook integration also applies to Clickable Assist, which will allow existing Pro customers to launch their Facebook ads for future self management.

But look who else has been courting the ‘book: Marin Software’s flagship product, Marin Search Marketer, has “gotten jiggy” (oh yeah, I went there) with Facebook Ads and will offer users the ability to edit their bids and creative individually or in bulk. The software will support audience targeting through numerous demographics as well as reporting and management by audience segment. Marin will also enable automatic bidding on Facebook ads.

Facebook, you slut!

In other Facebook advertising news, ClickZ has discovered that advertisers are circumventing the site’s new ad evaluation regime that cracks down on loose use of user characteristics. I’m shocked… SHOCKED! Who could have ever foreseen that?

Clickable Pro 2.0, a pure-play search management product, is supposed to make search advertising simple and quick for small businesses, midsize enterprises and agencies, and will allow advertisers to manage search and pay-per-click performance across Google, Yahoo and MSN’s advertising networks.

“Clickable is transforming search advertising for small to midsize advertisers and agencies on the principle of simplicity,” says David S. Kidder, co-founder and CEO. “We’ll continue to rapidly release meaningful product iterations that cultivate best practices, save time and drive performance and profitability. In this down economy, our promise is to help advertisers’ drive better results in less time, and constantly improve.”

The new version includes:

Emerging Google Ad Formats – including Image (banners), Local Business (maps) and Mobile (text and image). Customers now can add and edit new ad formats right alongside text ads. Clickable is offering this beta functionality for free to Clickable customers so they can experiment and guide Clickable’s development around new advertising formats.

Keyword Filter And Bulk Edit to empower agencies and advertisers to quickly search, edit and export high volumes of keywords across all advertising networks and accounts, all at once and with great flexibility. Bulk editing reduces tedious spreadsheet analysis, saves time and reduces errors.

Clickable Conversion Tracking, which moves out of beta and into the Clickable interface, enabling advertisers to easily measure ROI with one simple, independent tracking system. This powerful reporting tool also informs Clickable’s ActEngine in real time to deliver campaign recommendations with better return.

An Improved ActEngine, including new recommendations to help advertisers more precisely set keyword match types to drive higher quality traffic; properly set up campaigns for content versus search keyword inventory; and optimize long-tail keyword bids. The ActEngine now includes a history of campaign recommendations accepted or ignored; this is the first in a series of enhancements to report results pre- and post-recommendations and drive overall transparency.

Clickable raised $14.5 million in a Series B round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Existing investors Union Square Ventures and FirstMark Capital also ponied up some cash. That brought Clickable’s coffers up to $22.5 million.

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This brings Clickable’s coffers up to $22.5 million – not bad for a year of fund-raising. The paid search management company has 400 registered users. The infusion will be used to pad out its direct sales team and ramp up development of its campaign management dashboard.

The ADSDAQ Exchange Trading Desk will enable buyers to buy more inventory in the better-performing contextual advertising areas and offer to sell underperforming display ads. The new desk can track campaigns outside of its system to, so interactive ad agencies can benchmark their campaign’s performance against 386 other contextual categories of inventory.

A handful of agencies, including Omnicom’s OMD and WPP’s GroupM, are participating in the invitation-only beta program. The desk can be utilized across media buys on portals, ad networks and site-specific buys to break down purchases into content categories and analyze campaign performance within those categories.

“ContextWeb may have found a formula to deliver the best type of insights-ones that are both actionable and because they are standardized to context-repeatable at scale,” said Rob Norman, CEO, GroupM Interaction Worldwide, a division of WPP and one of the program’s beta partners. “The goal of ContextWeb’s ADSDAQ Exchange is to eliminate barriers in this fragmented marketplace so advertisers can buy and sell inventory based on continuous learning and publishers can unlock the true value of their inventory,” said Anand Subramanian, CEO of ContextWeb, Inc. “The ADSDAQ Exchange Agency Trading Desk is a crucial part of making this a reality.”

Clickable and Google are also reportedly developing similar platforms for advertisers.

The round included investments from strategic individual investors Peter Thiel, Managing Partner of The Founders Fund and Co-founder of PayPal and Jonathan F. Miller, former America Online Chairman and Chief Executive.

Clickable will use this investment to continue to accelerate product development and support its 2008 public launch as the preeminent online advertising solution for small and midsize marketers. Clickable provides an intuitive experience to view and manage online advertising across a broad range of major advertising networks, while realizing transformational ROI with greater efficiency through simplicity.

This is the second close of a strategic Series A capitalization, completing a financing led by the same institutional investors.

The company also announced the addition of Rick Heitzmann, a Partner at Pequot Ventures to its Board of Directors. Heitzmann is a veteran venture capitalist focused on emerging media and advertising, and data and information services. This follows the recent appointment of Jonathan Miller to Clickable’s Board.

Clickable is an online advertising Web service that makes creating and managing search-engine marketing campaigns simple and effective. Clickable provides an intuitive experience to view search marketing performance across a broad range of networks, including Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter and others.