MySpace is on to something big, really big. Peter Levinsohn, President of Fox Interactive Media (the News Corp. unit that owns Myspace), outlined how MySpace will take down Facebook at a Merrill Lynch’s Media & Entertainment Conference on Tuesday. How do they plan on doing this? By targeting ads to the data on a users personal pages of course! Take a few minutes to digest that…got it? Ok. After more then six months of testing, MySpace is ready launch what they call “interest targeting technology” to a broader MySpace audience. This new initiative will allow advertisers to target consumers with advertisements based on the information they put into their profiles.”What we’re talking about is very new — the ability to make [marketing] decisions based on user interests,” Levinsohn told the roomful of investors and analysts.
The algorithms powering MySpace’s new ad targeting system works by grouping users into 10 key interest group like autos, fashion, finance, sports and games. Along with the targeted groups the ad system determines ad placement by key demographic stats and previous ad interactions. This targeting reaches 3 million plus active MySpace users and during tests within the auto category it improved the likelihood that members would interact with an ad by 70%. 3 million users * 70% = $$$$.
Levinsohn views this as only the beginning for MySpace, with future enhancements enabling even more direct targeting. Levinsohn also spent some time comparing MySpace directly to Facebook, mentioning key stats like MySpace users visit 30% more often than Facebook members.
So who do you think MySpace thinks the most about?
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