It would seem that popular social networking website MySpace are the latest organisation to push a new initiative onto the world of online advertising, with the introduction of their new self-serve ad platform My Ads in beta. We've been waiting to see this platform in action for a year now, but now we might at least get a chance to find out if the social networking site will fare better in the press than Facebook did when it tried to launch its own ads platform. The new service, similarly to Facebook, allows MySpace users to create their own targeted ad and then post it on MySpace. However, MySpace are only allowing display ads to be placed while Facebook accepts text ads too. On MySpace users can choose between a 728x90 or 300x250 ad unit, and can also upload their own ads or create them using a Flash tool and / or with pre-built templates.
But, it is their hypertargeting technology that is the driving force behind the service. It's a powerful tool that may well help to distinguish them from the competition. Facebook also allows you to target users; however, this is specifically based on the user's area of interest. But, MySpace goes that bit further, allowing you to build an actual profile of each user, largely based on monitoring their MySpace habits.
Furthermore, you are able to categorize each user in 1,200 different ways. For example, you are able to target males between the ages of 25 to 30 who live in London and like cars; in addition, it is also useful to know that the ad tool actually returns the results for you.
There is actually no fee to be paid for your advertisement, but MySpace expect to receive income from this service by charging on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. An ad will continue to be displayed on MySpace until it reaches its expiration date or alternatively the advertisers reach their spending limit.
It will be interesting to see if MySpace are now set to become the first social networking site that is completely able to monetize the phenomenon to its full potential. It has already been reported that the pre-launch phase is exceeding their expectations.
Having only very recently been launched, time will tell as to how popular My Ads will prove for MySpace overall, particularly against some of the other CPC platforms out there but if they've hit on a way to successfully gather profits from ads without upsetting their users they will surely be onto a winner.
