News Corp.’s MySpace social networking site has announced on Tuesday to allow advertisers target MySpace users based on the every so often extremely personal information they make public on their MySpace Web pages. The firm will now use these personal details contained on users’ profile pages and blogs to trade highly targeted advertising, the Internet’s top social network said.
The social networking site has more than three million users in each category and can place advertisements centered on responses to questions about users’ likes and dislikes, favorite movies and music.
Another huge source is the data extracted from blog entries, where users provide comprehensive account of their lives. However, following the recent trends targeting ads can surely be lucrative for MySpace and its corporate parent, but it can also boomerang if users consider their personal expressions are being mistreated.
Peter Levinsohn, head Fox Interactive Media, said on Tuesday, ‘So far, advertisers are happy with the new features. The new targeting programs increase the likelihood someone will click on the ad, which is a measure of the ad’s success, by nearly 100 percent’.
The program has been launched after almost six months of testing by a team; MySpace is now apparently set to launch into a six-month beta test of its new ad-targeting system. The program integrates algorithms that assign members to one of 10 primary interest categories including travel, sports, fashion, autos and health.
