EA Playfish announced today an ad network partnership with Nanigans just ahead of launching The Sims Social, a Facebook installment of EA’s 10-year-old Sims franchise. Nanigans also announced a $3 million first round of funding led by Avalon Ventures.

The Nanigans partnership grants EA Playfish first dibs on new features in the former’s ad engine platform. The social game developer has already put the ad engine to use in Madden NFL Superstars, Monopoly Millionaires, and Restaurant City. Nanigans’ ad engine uses the Facebook’s Ads API to conduct real-time bidding that optimizes developer ad spend for acquisition of users that make purchases or have sustained engagement.

Yesterday, we explored how targeted ad spend can help social game developers reduce overall cost-per-installs, which leads to a better-performing social game. Nanigans is one of several services that help developers purchase Facebook application installs, like AdParlor, Alchemy, Spruce Media, or Brighter Option. By securing funding from Avalon, Nanigans ads Rich Levandov, one of the first investors in Zynga, to its board.

The Sims Social, a collaboration between EA Playfish and EA internal developer The Sims Studio, officially launches “soon” on Facebook, although players can click Go To App as of today. Even before a closed beta launched in late July, the game’s page routinely made our weekly rankings lists of fastest-growing social games by monthly active and daily active users. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, the game currently has 1 million MAU and over 68,000 DAU. Read our exclusive hands-on experience with The Sims Social for more details.

UPDATE: Nanigans updated the original press release to remove mention of The Sims Studio as part of its EA Playfish partnership.

UPDATE 2: A Playfish spokesperson tells ISG that the partnership with Nanigans is not now, nor will it ever be exclusive. The erroneous information contained in the corrected press release has been removed from this story.