MySpace To Announce Self-Serve Hyper Targeted Advertising Network

MySpace will announce plans to introduce a new advertising platform, “SelfServe by MySpace,” at Ad:Tech Monday. The service itself will launch to a limited set of advertisers in the next sixty days. The nearly $1 billion Google search deal signed last year is not affected by this product. Google handles search and text ads only; the new MySpace platform is for display ads on profile pages. SelfServe by MySpace will allow advertisers to directly purchase, create and analyze the performance of ads throughout the MySpace network. The new tool will enable users to select from a number of ad targeting factors such as geographic, demographic, and various user interest categories. The service will be ready for use by early 2008. The minimum advertisement purchase size is $10; pricing will be based on a click to the advertiser’s profile and will be auction based once it gets going (to start things off, MySpace will charge a fixed CPC based on the category). MySpace will also announce the completion of the first phase of another new advertising platform, “HyperTargeting by MySpace” which allows marketers to buy advertising targeted to specific interest-based segments of the MySpace audience. MySpace uses proprietary technology to build a detailed profile of each user and their friends, including age, gender, location and interests. Much of this information is pulled contextually from the profile itself (that’s where the secret sauce is). So, for example, MySpace may have a very good idea that a user is not only a sports fan, but the specific sport the user loves as well as the teams and even players he or she follows closely.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/04/myspace-to-announce-self-serve-advertising-network/