The world’s largest social networking site today announced that it would be launching a new advertising program it calls “HyperTargeting,” which uses profile data to target ads to users. MySpace rolled out the first phase of its HyperTargeting program to a select group of advertisers, including Microsoft, Ford, Toyota, Proctor & Gamble, and Universal Pictures, in July by dividing its users into 10 target groups (music, movies, personal finance, gaming, consumer electronics, sports, travel, auto, fashion, and fitness). The company claims that performance increases for early testers of the platform were as high as 300% over demographically tageted ads.
The company has now expanded those 10 categories to over 100 more tightly defined groups. Right now the changes have only occured on the US-based site, but should roll out on the international versions of MySpace next year. The company hopes to eventually expand to over 1000 target categories.
“About a year ago we went out and recruited people away from Google, Microsoft and Ebay. We have 150 folks working on monetization technology and engineers focused on segmenting the audience, ad delivery and analytics,” said Adam Bain, chief technology officer for Fox Interactive Media (which runs MySpace) to the Financial Times. Bain also said that the company plans to focus more on better targeting ads to the interests of its users and making them more “contextually relevant.”
MySpace also said it would be releasing a self-serve tool that will allow smaller advertisers to place ads on the site.
