RadiumOne, the digital ad network targeting audiences’ social connections in real-time with its proprietary ShareGraph technology, recently announced the launch of Po.st, a new social sharing platform that enables consumers to easily share content via Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, email and multiple other popular online destinations. Over 1,000 sites reaching over 250 million monthly active unique users are already leveraging Po.st, including Weather Underground, eBaumsWorld and Dictionary.com, among others.

“With Po.st, we spent the last six months creating a ground-breaking product that brings publishers more significant value from the sharing on their sites,” said Gurbaksh Chahal, Founder and CEO, RadiumOne.

“Publishers large and small are already using Po.st, and we’re confident that with our current demand we’ll quickly achieve our goal of reaching one billion unique users globally in 2012.”

Po.st is a social sharing platform that provides consumers with nearly all the popular social tools they want, while also providing publishers with both new insights about their audience and revenue streams to grow their business.  Po.st can be integrated  into their existing site infrastructure to harness the true value of social sharing.

It’s a sector that’s attracted many startups and established businesses alike, as analytics  becomes more inherently tied to social sharing.  Companies like Clearspring all recognize the potential of this booming industry, inferring a great deal of consumer behavior from raw data generated by social sharing activity.  Po.st is hoping to stand out with its analytics and speed specific to a publisher’s display ad needs, with several integration points with RadiumOne’s existing platform and resources.

Social media and today’s ads

Social Media has been one of the most utilized platforms for advertising, since it has the widest reach in terms of audience.  Advertisements put on social networks can spread like viral videos–if a user sees interesting pieces posted on their friends’ walls, you can rest assured that they will hit the like and the share button.  So advertisers are using people’s curiosity to their advantage.

The evolution in marketing has even spawned a new contest designated just for this emerging industry.  The 2012 Internet Advertising Competition recognizes the best online advertising in 96 industries and 9 online formats including, online ad, video, mobile, newsletter, email and social media.  It is produced by the Web Marketing Association to honor excellence in online advertising, recognize the individuals and organizations responsible, and showcase the best in award winning Internet advertising.

The 2011 winner for Best of Show Social Media campaign was the Coca-Cola Happiness Machine.  The video features a typical soda-popping machine but unlike any other machines, it not only dispenses Coke bottles but also awesome surprises such as flowers, balloons, pizza and a 6-foot long sandwich.  The video has over four million views on YouTube–proof that even big brands can leverage social media to their marketing advantage.