According to DigitalBeat, Facebook today is expected to announce a partnership with media research firm Nielsen that will give the social networking site better analytics on how its ads are doing.

The partnership comes just one week after Facebook flew past 300 million users and, presumably, will bring the site closer to its goal of being a massive company on the same level as Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google. In order to do that, Facebook needs a strong presence in the advertising market.

As part of the partnership, advertisers who are also Nielsen customers will be allowed to poll Facebook users who have seen the ads on the social network's site. These will appear in the sponsored messages space on Facebook's homepage, and according to Facebook, they will be controlled to limit participation. Facebook also allayed privacy concerns by promising that no personally identifiable information will be collected.