The Dawn of Like-vertising.– Brian Morrissey

Two truths of the online media world: brands want to develop social connections with consumers and there are tons of cheap ad inventory thanks largely to the explosion of social networking. The combination of the two could result in more advertising designed to drive social connections rather than transactions or brand awareness.

A new online ad network, RadiumOne, is debuting what it’s calling “like retargeting.” The system works like this: Companies will pixel their pages to identify visitors. RadiumOne then uses that information to find those visitors around the Web and show them ads designed to drive them to “like” the brand on Facebook. The ad network is expanding the pool of potential likers by mining those candidates’ social connections to also show the ads to them.

“Instead of retargeting people in the [sales] funnel, we’re adding people to the funnel,” said Gurbaksh Chahal, CEO of RadiumOne and founder of behavioral ad network Blue Lithium that was bought by Yahoo for $300 million September 2007.

In doing so, a target audience of 100,000 can grow by six or seven times, he said.

Continues @ http://www.brandweek.com