MySpace grows targeted adverts
Since July, MySpace has allowed more than 50 leading advertisers, including Procter & Gamble Co, Ford Motor Co and Yum Brands Inc’s Taco Bell chain, to target any of 10 interest groups, such as movies, travel and auto.
In the programme’s second phase, launched yesterday MySpace added an 11th category, television, along with hundreds of subcategories, such as horror movies.
Like other social networking site, MySpace offers a mix of messaging tools to encourage its visitors to expand their circles of friends. Central to it are personal profile pages where users can post photos and video clips, blast messages to friends and have visitors leave comments.
Targeting ads properly can be lucrative.
MySpace, a unit of News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media, said many advertisers improve response rates fourfold through its targeting programme, which also includes segmentation by location and age groups. The company says it charges advertisers more, though it would not say how much.
But targeting can also backfire if users believe their personal expressions are being misused.
When MySpace’s chief rival, Facebook, introduced a feature last year that allows users to more easily track changes their friends make to profiles, many users denounced it as stalking and threatened protests and boycotts. Facebook had to quickly apologise and agree to let users turn off the feature so that others can’t easily see what they do.
Facebook was scheduled to announce its own ad programme today, though officials refused to discuss its nature.
Adam Bain, executive vice-president for products and technology at Fox Interactive, said the company spent a year developing its programme and created user panels to study privacy and other issues.
“The thing we heard from them is they wanted advertisements to be more contextually relevant to them,” Mr Bain said. “If they have to live with ads, they want an ad to be engaging.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
