The Filter, the Peter Gabriel-backed digital entertainment recommendation site, has appointed Doug Merrill, former CIO of Google (NSDQ: GOOG), to its board of directors, as it ramps up its strategy to white-label its recommendation engine to third-party content sites. The Filter says it has two big deals that it will announce later this month, for a customer each in Europe and the U.S.. Merrill’s appoint is a non-executive position.

The company, which first launched in 2008 as a standalone consumer service, has been offering recommendation services to other content sites for the better part of a year now. It’s racked up several high-profile customers in the process: Sony (NYSE: SNE) Music Entertainment (which uses it in its music player MyPlay); online video rental site DVDPost; ThePlatform and Evolver.net, along with We7, the Gabriel-backed music site. The Filter also says it “collaborates” with Nokia (NYSE: NOK), presumably on Nokia Music, although a spokesperson would not confirm this directly.

It seems an obvious move to partner with other content sites, since recommendation alone - with recommendations occasionally attached to actual content - looks like it has a limited appeal. TechCrunch points out that The Filter currently gets about 800,000 unique visitors per month: a spokesperson tells us this is significantly less than the number of people using The Filter through third-party sites, which have a combined reach of about 20 million. Online is far outweighing mobile recommendations at this point, too.

But despite the slower traffic it plans to continue its own consumer-facing business, since “it’s a good showcase for current and prospective customers.”

The two deals that The Filter expects to announce later this month would bring total customer reach to about 85 million, according to TechCrunch.

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