MySpace launches MyAds

MySpace, the most popular of the social networking sites with over 122 million registered members, has launched a tool that will allow small businesses to target ads to preferred demographics and profiles.

by Helen Leggatt

MyAds is a new offering from MySpace that will allow marketers to target members of the social networking site based on gender, age and location plus 'hyper-targeting' of members based on profiles generated by their activity on the site over time.

It is the hyper-targeting aspect of MyAds that is getting advertisers excited, with over 1,200 profiles to drill down into. Initial testing at the end of 2007 was seen to increase performance of the hyper-targeted ads 300% over demographically targeted ads.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch explains. "If you only want to target women who live in California between the ages of 25-30 who like motorcycles, i can. There are 2,842 of them on MySpace. And if I just want to target those in San Francisco, I can. There are 147 of them (the ad tool tells you all of this)."

While Facebook only allows text ads, MySpace has gone one further and only allows the creation of display ads. Ad sizes consist of a 728x90 or 300x250 units. Those that don't have a creative agency can make their own using pre-developed templates and a Flash tool.

Tags: demographics, display ads, Facebook, hyper-targeting, MyAds, MySpace, social network, text ads