RadiumOne, the social-data driven ad network launched last year by serial entrepreneur Gurbaksh Chahal, has introduced a "Like" button for display ads to help marketers better target
advertising.
No, it's not the Facebook "Like," but an option the company is offering in ads -- along with a new "Share" button, for people to express their preferences in the ads they
see.
When users indicate they "Like" an ad, RadiumOne promises "consumers will begin to see ads that reflect their personal preference in terms of product, message and style. Advertisers will
be able to deliver ads to the users most likely to engage with them."
Clicking the "Share" button triggers a window that allows people to share the ad through Facebook, Twitter, email and other
social media channels. RadiumOne's underlying model is built on mining the social graph to target ads. Its system taps into the data people share via social networks (excluding Facebook), blog posts,
links, videos and other information to match ads with the right audience.
To the extent people use the new sharing tool to send ads to Facebook friends, RadiumOne could also gain data from the
largest social network to add to the mix. The proliferation of the Facebook "Like" button across the Web, however, seems likely to create at least some confusion among users looking at ads served by
RadiumOne with its own "Like" feature. In beta testing, RadiumOne said shared banners yielded a 28% higher conversion rate for advertisers. It also found that the 32% of consumers who "Liked" banners
visited the advertiser's page within five days of seeing the ad.
Inviting users to vote on online ads isn't new. Facebook itself gave users the ability to give a thumbs up or down to ads on
the site in 2008. Digg did the same with a new format introduced in 2009 that let users "Digg" or "Bury" ads appearing in the stream of stories on the home page.
RadiumOne said data
collected through its "Like" button is anonymous and that the feature is compliant with guidelines from the Network Advertising Initiative, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PrivacyChoice.