Look at it this way: in April MySpace was fortunate enough to receive around 30 billion page views (Source: Nielsen/NetRatings) placing it second in web visitor rankings. Surely it is a no-brainer that MySpace should be using this massive volume to take home a large piece of the billion-dollar-a-year pie that is paid search advertising? Speculation on this subject is obviously rife.
Stephen Ellis of The Motley Fool provides a stark warning to Google, and advises that they should looking over their shoulder at the ambitious social networking site since "the next generation of internet pay per click advertising is going to be supported by online content". Going even further he stated that in MySpace, News Corp. "has both the content and the online properties to build an online advertising powerhouse."
Although Google and Yahoo! have been basking in the stream of money that pay per click advertising can provide for a while now, one of the latest directions they have taken the medium in provides an open window through which MySpace could clamber. Demographic targeting is seen as the next step in improving advert relevance, and has been made available to advertisers by both Google and MSN.
By nature, online communities group together internet users of similar ages and interests. Bambi Francisco (MarketWatch) argues that the social network sites "are actually the newest forms of clustering audiences for advertisers". It would seem that finding the best way of opening up these massive, targeted audiences will be key in defining MySpace's strength when it comes to serving ads.
We can be left in no doubt that News Corp. will eventually push MySpace into the ring, and that when they do Google, Yahoo!, MSN et al had better be ready for some tough competition. The question still remains over how News Corp. will choose to utilize their prized asset, and whether it be through incorporating an in-house search engine or otherwise, I'm sure one of the most interested onlookers will be the current kingpins of paid search, Google.
