RadiumOne, an online ad network that aims to combine social and intent data to serve ads, is unveiling a new ad format today that aims to bring social elements within the actual display ad. Spawned from gWallet, RadiumOne mines social data, uses this information to identify relevant consumers for brands, and then serves advertisements to this audience based on this data.
Called the “R1 Like Button,” the new button can be placed on the add to allow users to Like an ad. Of course, it’s not a Facebook Like button and the actual act of “liking” an ad doesn’t really do anything but help RadiumOne serve you more relevant advertisements. Advertisers can also choose to include a “Share” button on an ad, which will allow consumer to share the ad through Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and other social media sites.
And RadiumOne is claiming that uses are more likely to interact with the social ad formats. In early testing, the R1 Like Button generated a clickthrough rate of .12% and a Like button click rate of .18%; the Share rate was .02%. In addition, lead requests increased by 45%.
That data impressive but I’m still dubious that many users will actually “like” an ad they see on a publisher site. While this works for Facebook, RadiumOne is testing this on publisher sites where users may not be as engaged in “liking” objects on a page that aren’t involved with a Facebook “like.”
I think consumers will need more of an incentive to interact with an online ad. What would be interesting is if RadiumOne allows advertisers to give users incentives to “like” an advertisement, i.e. you could receive a discount at a restaurant for ‘liking’ the ad.