MySpace Targeted Ads Go Live

MySpace has launched MyAds, cost-per-click banner advertising that can be highly targeted at users.

MySpace users will have noticed something new as of yesterday. Yes, MySpace now has banner ads. But they’re not the type of banners that were ubiquitous years ago. These are a little different, and MySpace is hoping they’ll bring in money and make the social networking site more popular. So far the system is only operative in the US.

MyAds is a pay-per-click system that allows anyone to buy banner ads that can be targeted at users according to gender, age, location and interests.

The ads begin at 25 cents a click, with the scale rising depending on the popularity of the targeted groups. For the moment at least it will run alongside the older MySpace ad system, where users buy slots based on the number of views.

Chris DeWolfe, the co-founder and chief executive of MySpace, explained to the Guardian that the news system is "something that we’ve been working on for the last year and a half and we’re ready to roll it out on a wide-scale basis. There’s over 20m small businesses here in the US that we’re not servicing at all. It’s a complete market that we think is huge."

"Advertising on the internet in general last quarter was up 8%, while advertising as a whole was down. We’re cautiously optimistic that we’re going to continue to hit our numbers."