Are you an “influencer?” If so, BuzzLogic has an ad network for you

Social media influencers of the world take note: You can now (theoretically) get the financial credit your influence deserves.

Today, BuzzLogic, a start-up capitalized to the tune of about $13.5 million, goes live with its its “Conversation Ad Network.” This network uses algorithms that ferret out the big time influencers and the lesser influencers over whom they hold sway and place ads on their blogs. Because the ads are targeted, niche blogs with influence within their niche can get more revenue than they would from using something like AdSense.

In a way, BuzzLogic’s technology competes with that of the next-generation “social network” targeting networks like 33Across and Lotame, which throw social graph analysis in with behavioral and demographic data, but it takes a different approach: While these companies use cookies to analyze your path across the sites in their network, BuzzLogic doesn’t do any behavioral analysis at all.

The company started out as a brand-monitoring service for PR and marketing types who want to keep track of everything being said about their brands, by whom, and how much power the people saying it have on the web. By choosing a set of keywords, users could see where the conversation around any topic started and how it spread.

The idea was that the PR and marketing people could isolate the most influential bloggers talking about their brands and reach out to them. While that’s all nice and good for BuzzLogic, it mostly amounts to a service business backed by some fancy technology that didn’t seem dramatically differentiated from the offerings from companies like Visible Technologies and Radian6. As an advertising platform, however, it makes a lot of sense.

BuzzLogic’s ad network, which has been in testing for a few months, now has over 500 blogs, ranging from Dog Art Today to tech blogger Duncan Riley’s Inquistr. It also can be used to hone campaigns on AdSense and a few other big networks. When Military.com wanted to promote DoD Buzz, a spin-off blog aimed at Department of Defense types responsible for making expensive equipment purchases, it used BuzzLogic to reach them. To that company’s surprise, it found over 2000 blogs and news sites read by this elusive niche and placed ads on around 250 of them.

Military.com says readers acquired through BuzzLogic came to the site in larger numbers than they had through standard search campaigns and stayed on the site longer when they did.

BuzzLogic is based in San Francisco.