• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 2, 2009

Lotame Solutions has partnered with Amplify and Vizu to measure the value of advertising on social media networks beyond the click. The deal gives clients of the behavioral targeting tech firm access to click-throughs, metrics on the length of time Web searchers affix to a specific ad on a page, and if the brand's ad posted on that page increases or decreases buzz, awareness or purchase intent.

While Amplify's linguistic technology assesses the tone of conversations on blog posts related to brands and campaigns, Vizu's Ad Catalyst measures the impact of viewer perception for key brand attributes.

Scott Hoffman, CMO at Lotame, Elkridge, MD, believes it's the first time this type of technology has been applied to social media advertising to easily measure and quantify monetization and value of online ads. "We want to bring the TV model to the Internet," he said.

Lotame's behavioral targeting technology, which launched about a year ago, analyzes behavior from consumers who chat-up brands on social media and community platforms such as huffingtonpost.com, flixster. com and fotolog.com. Since launching early last year, the company has supported about 100 campaigns, mostly repeats from ad agencies such as Hill Holliday, Horizon Interactive/Media, and MediaVest.

Taylor Valentine, director of strategic services at Horizon Interactive/Media, who oversees emerging, social and organic media, will soon begin testing Lotame's technology that monitors the time searchers spend looking at ads on a specific Web pages.

As one of the first agencies to implement the combined package from Lotame, Amplify and Vizu, Valentine said it will provide analysis to help understand the connection between time spent, brand lift and consumer sentiment. "That is a wonderful thing," he said. "It adds so many more dimensions on accessing success to optimize future campaigns."

Valentine also said it gets agencies from dependence on "the click," adding that the click matters, but it's not the only measurement of success.

Data analyzed to rate buzz, brand awareness and purchase intent ranges from knowing pages and site content clicked on or viewed from a specific computer, to the influence a person might have on others, depending on the amount of blog posts written daily. Hoffman insists that Lotame doesn't collect and store "personally identifiable data," but rather information in "aggregate" from cookies.