Social media's GOOG factor?

In partnership with Lotame — short for "local, target and message" — WPP's Mindshare shall serve ads to users based on time they spend engaged with certain social media sites, as well as with the ad content on those pages.

MediaPost dubbed the deal a "Madison Avenue first."

Lotame is a two-year-old startup that built a suite of audience targeting systems which empower marketers to serve ads based on where and when users may be most receptive to them. The company calls this its "Crowd Control Technology" — which boasts tracking tools so sophisticated they can even gauge whether a user's mouse is inactive or active on a screen.

According to CEO Andy Monfried, the system will serve the social media marketplace in the same way Google AdWords enriched keyword-based sponsored search advertising. By minimizing superfluous impressions, marketers will be better able to scale and realize conversions on their social media deployments.

For its part, Mindshare will use Lotame's "time spent" online ad buying system to buttress an existing campaign for "a national mobile telecommunications network." As to the latter's identity, bets are on Sprint and Nextel, whose $1 billion media buying account Mindshare currently manages.