MySpace Drives Social Net Commercialization

Though TV networks and content kings still struggle mightily in measuring their audience and monetizing their assets on the Internet and wireless platforms, social networking sites are offering advertisers ways to target their messages to users of the popular sites.

They’re doing this by giving advertisers access to basic profile information for their millions of users, plus the ability they create and send ads based on a growing list of categories, including movies, automobiles and travel.

MySpace is expanding its ad program by expanding its 10 categories to more than 100, giving people the ability to better hone and focus their marketing messages.

Facebook, Inc. is said to be prepping a similar targeted advertising effort.

What’s striking is that Internet video sites, such as social networking sites, are moving ahead quickly in enabling targeted advertising to the millions of users on their sites while content owners still seek business models for putting their content on the Web.

The top value for advertisers – and the reason why Microsoft recently bought a stake in Facebook – isn’t the user-generated videos that members create. It’s for the databases that contain all the subscriber information that’s gold for savvy marketers.

And it helps advertisers avoid the cost of mass audience advertising for big TV networks, while providing them the ability to as tightly focus their marketing messages as possible. The audience is far smaller, but viewers are more likely to be interested, and act on, the ads.

MySpace started with 10 groups for the mid-summer launch of its platform with the further subdivision rolling out this week. The site plans to take the program international at an unspecified date next year.

Executives at MySpace parent News Corp. have said they expect the fledgling program to bring in tens of millions of dollars to help it reach its yearend bottom line goal of $800 million.

Revenue-generating programs such as MySpace’s could change the perception of social networking sites as a fad, Internet hangouts and dating destinations for college kids and recent grads.

Advertisers have been searching for an effective means to reach target audiences that they claim they can’t hit with ads on big broadcast networks, with companies like beer giant Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. going as far earlier this year to launch its own Web site, which it admitted has not met expectations as a video destination.

Facebook Inc. www.facebook.com
MySpace www.myspace.com
News Corp. www.newscorp.com

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