The ad network is named the, "Conversation Ad Network" and they describe the service as, "designed to reward bloggers leading influential conversations on specific topics with quality brand advertising and more advertising revenue."

BuzzLogic has an important thing going for them – their tracking service draws in many of the top brands. These brands can now reach out directly to blogs that reach the brand’s target audience and demographics. The key for this blogger ad network is the same as every other one out there — will they be able to keep a consistently high fill rate? Getting bloggers to signup is the easy part.

We’ve covered BuzzLogic many times before including our executive interview and the launch of their advertiser network.

Today they are acquiring Activeweave, makers of BlogRovr which is a browser plugin that helps to identify posts you might be interested in based on your interests. I spoke with the new team last week regarding the acquisition and while they couldn’t share the acquisition price, they did explain that the combined company will target, "conversational marketing." The plugin has 80,000 active users and 200,000 blogs (we are one) are in the BlogRovr network.

The latest tool from BuzzLogic is conversational advertising — that is helping companies to put advertising right where the conversation is using Google AdWords and other ad networks. We wrote about this advertising option late last year and said it’s a game changer. With the Activeweave acquisition, this program should expand into even more blogs and verticals.

Both companies are based in San Francisco and the new company has 27 employees.

Update: Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb has a lengthy look into DataPortability regarding the BlogRovr service.

Tonight they launch what I believe is an excellent addition to their service offering. When a company uses the BuzzLogic monitoring service, they can track who is talking about their product/service (the influencers and the conversations) and monitor the buzz. BuzzLogic has their own ranking systems and provide a more rounded view on what’s going on. Just because a blog is ranked 1st for a specific term/category does not mean they will rank the same across any topics they cover. I like this because it allows their clients to see everyone who is speaking about a specific product, not just what some top x list says.

Their new offering is an advertising platform build on top of Google AdSense with other ad networks coming in the near future. The idea is simple in description: once you find out which blogs are talking about your product, you want to advertise your product on those sites to reinforce the message. The actual ad creation process is the same as with AdWords, actually it’s exactly the same except it’s in the BuzzLogic framework. The real difference is the site targeting. You use the BuzzLogic service to select the sites based on the analysis you have completed. Then you buy ads on those sites. You can see a sample screenshot of the pre-AdWords piece below.

I asked about sites that aren’t using Google AdWords and basically those sites won’t be available for purchase. As I noted above, more networks are coming soon they tell me. What I don’t know is if a site has site-targeting off, what happens. I have site targeting off but would like to be included in the ad buys.

It’s an interesting way to "join the conversation" – it’s not as effective as actually joining the conversation in comments and reaching out to the writer, but it is a way to get a message out to specific sites discussing a specific product or service.

If you remember back to when the iPhone dropped price and Nokia had some keyword buys, this tool would work well for that type of ad purchase – Nokia could select the blogs that are influencers around the iPhone and get quick access to their readerbase.

One of the quotes they sent over after our conversation comes from Lending Club, a company covered many times on CN. Renaud Laplanche, founder and CEO says, "Social media is becoming the go-to place for our potential customers to learn about Lending Club as they seek advice and information regarding personal finance. BuzzLogic makes it possible for us to target our advertising placements in association with those personal finance conversations, creating a greater value in our advertising spend."

Again, this should be viewed as a complement and not a replacement to joining the conversation. But it is a powerful complement.

Here is a sample of the interface for selecting the "influencers":

Today they have moved their product from Beta to commercially available. Pricing starts at $12,000 per year so while it won't be for the average small business, large companies can take advantage of a visual tool to track the buzz. This is key for product launches and for times of peril.

The team sent over the following additional features that are now part of the tool:

• An all new dashboard that summarizes campaign metrics, alerts and engagements
• Improved “Watchlists” that provide visibility into the communities that gather around content which marketers create (e.g. corporate blogs, destination websites, etc.) and track influencers who publish content and lead conversations elsewhere on the Web
• Enhanced Social Maps that make exploring the community around influential posts and publishers a snap
• A “Show Me Why” feature to give you a bird’s eye view into why particular posts and people are influential      
• Simple, customizable reports for campaign activity and the conversations you monitor

As bloggers and other user-generated content web sites continue to grow, tools such as BuzzLogic become more important to a company's reputation.

BuzzLogic is like taking Technorati and applying an algorithym on top of it. They showed me a demo of the application and it is pretty sweet. It does a great job of measuring the "buzz" around a topic or post.

They explain their service as: BuzzLogic changes this dynamic (influence) by uniquely defining and measuring influence in social media, and by surfacing the key influencers who are shaping and defining markets, issues and reputations.

We spent time discussing how they determine which sites have influence, how they get/lose influence and how their system works. I was very impressed by the thought and development that went into it. I like their cloud view where you can move any story into the center and watch the influence bubble around it. Really powerful.

Their call their pricing model disruptive; that is to say that it starts at $500 and for that money you get a strong return for the money. They claim to have hundreds of top companies already using the service.

Todd Parsons, BuzzLogic Co-Founder noted that, "we are finally at the point where companies are very proactive about building communities and engaging communities."

Check out their service at buzzlogic.com. I told them to have a look at Compete.com. I could see them partnering with a service like this. It's great to know about influence but it would be even more impactful if we could see that sites stats and demographics along with the influence.