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Amidst the buzz of Facebook’s newly announced advertising network and all that entails, Lookery reminds us that they are in the business of doing exactly what Facebook is doing, but not limiting themselves to Facebook.

Back in July, Scott Rafer was preparing to launch Lookery, following the success of MyBlogLog. It was described back then as an ad network designed specifically for the publishers of Facebook applications, with sales already taking place for ads at the time. Today, however, he describes the genesis of the Lookery idea that lead to him to create something eerily close to SocialAds; it was the question “WWZD?” (What Will Zuckerberg Do?).

Scott now looks to enumerate and publicize the differences between Facebook’s SocialAds and their system by highlighting the fact that they do sales of collected data, and demographic-only targeting, thereby protecting user privacy. He goes to great lengths to specify that the only data they collect has to do with age, gender and location, and thus does not collect personally identifiable information, or “PII.”

Limiting data to those key demographic points, to me, seems like it would significantly lower the value of the advertising inventory, as no interest-based targeting could really take place. You have to respect their stance on privacy to a certain extent, but without any keys to help generate intent or interest, the types of advertisers on the system would be severely limited.

None the less, it seems that a fair amount of background work has been done. If the system works as Scott described it today, as a developer, my advice would be to look into including them in applications you might develop, since they currently have buyers for available inventory, but keep an eye on the market for plan-B ad networks. Other networks that delve further into user intent will have more lucrative inventory to sell those same buyers when they discover that further targeting may be needed to produce better return on investment.

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