Businesses won’t spend money on social if they don’t understand how it helps them. That’s why Unified‘s social ads buying platform could get a big boost from its acquisition of PageLever, which gives marketers deep insight into the impact of their social strategies. PageLever‘s detailed analysis can show brands what and how often to post on Facebook, and which of those posts to turn into ads.

PageLever Tuesday announced Competitive Streams, an add-on to its service that lets marketers see what the competition is doing and which posts are doing well on the other side.

“Since competition in the feed is fierce and only the most relevant content rises to the top, I asked Brendan Irvine-Broque, director of growth at PageLever, for tips on how to perfectly time Facebook posts…”

“Unfortunately, there are a dearth of third parties to verify Facebook’s self-reported figure. One exception is PageLever, which has looked at Facebook’s Pages before and after the company tweaked its EdgeRank algorithm in September. The company analyzed more than 700 Pages with 100,000-plus fans from July 1 through Oct. 14 and found that the average reach per Page hadn’t budged.”

“Independent auditors like PageLever can look at huge data sets to determine what’s actually going on. When people make big claims like this, don’t just assume they’re right. Demand to see scientific evidence.”

“Facebook analytics firm PageLever dug through the daily spam complaints for more than 700 pages with at least 100,000 fans between August and October and found that spam reports did in fact spike during September.”

“Facebook page admins want to go to where the conversation is. It’s not always in the most recent post. That’s what PageLever’s newest product — Now — wants to solve. With PageLever Now, marketers can see real-time analytics based on the most recent likes, comments, and shares, whether the post happened today, yesterday or last month.”

“The Next Web has found it invaluable. Knowing that when posts include an image, for example, it leads to a much higher engagement with readers is crucial for understanding what works and what doesn’t.”

“PageLever, which provides analytics tools for brands with Facebook Pages, has introduced a new tool that lets you visualize user engagement on those Pages in real time.”

“Facebook analytics platform PageLever has introduced PageLever Now, which newest features include Facebook engagement analytics displayed in real time.”

“PageLever’s tools plot a brand’s posts on a chart for at-a-glance looks at how each post’s reach has gone up or down in the last 48 hours.”

“Indeed, the terminal-esque display is the reason that PageLever Now has so much potential for marketers as it is the first real-time post based analytics program.”

“Almost one in five new Facebook fans came from mobile devices in August, an increase of 280% in four months, according to new research from PageLever.”

What PageLever found was rather interesting: 98% of post views generate no negative feedback. But the other 2% of the time a fan responds with some form of negative feedback.

The team at PageLever found that inbound referrals from LinkedIn have jumped over 1000%, while referrals from Twitter are spiraling downward.

“When we compared photo posts to link posts in a 30-day period in PageLever, one of the many tools we use, we realized immediate results.”

“About 5 to 10 percent of traffic to Facebook pages comes from external sources rather than from within Facebook, according to data from PageLever.”

“According to data provided to Mashable by PageLever, tab engagement has dropped off 53% since brand Pages began adopting Timeline.”

“PageLever, a Facebook analytics company, uncovered a significant drop in traffic post SPYW launch. The company studied 500 fan pages with a minimum of 10,000 fans, looking at external referrals from Bing and Google.”

“Facebook is showing you to more people but less often per person,” said Jeff Widman, co-founder of PageLever. “I would say it’s actually much better for brand pages now.”

“Search makes up 34% of all external referral traffic to Facebook Pages, with Google 27.5% coming from Google, according to a six month study of 1,000 Pages by analytics provider PageLever.”

PageLever, a Y Combinator startup that launched Wednesday, is a more elaborate version of Insights for brands that want to get a bit deeper in their analysis — a group of users that so far includes YouTube, Microsoft, Mint and Kayak.

“Y Combinator startup PageLever today launches a Facebook Page analytics tool designed to help admins better understand their data and refine their marketing strategies.”

“Now Y Combinator-funded startup PageLever wants to give Pages with a large number of fans (over 10,000) tools that can help them better figure out exactly what they should be sharing with their fans.”

“PageLever is a Y Combinator-backed startup that is turning the world of Facebook analytics upside down. Since it requires access to your page from anyone who is a page administrator, it can pull deeper, more meaningful data and it can tell you information about that data that you’ve never seen before.”

New statistics shared with us by analytics service provider PageLever indicate that Facebook Pages with more fans receive fewer unique Page views per fan. This means the focus of Page admins and the Facebook industry on Page tab applications for engagement may be misplaced, as most engagement with Pages with more than one million Likes occurs in the news feed.

“Facebook analytics platform PageLever has added features that let page owners categorize and compare their posts, as well as receive alerts about any changes in key metrics.”