• Cnet News.com, Wednesday, September 24, 2008 12:04 PM

MySpace is rolling out a new advertising product called the Self-Serve Ad Service that makes it easy for anyone to promote their product or service on the social network. Users can upload ads they've created or make new ones using the MySpace system. To create new ads, users choose from a list of templates and upload an image to place in the ad. They can then target their audience by gender, age, region, city/state and interests.

The system allows for such hypertargeting as women aged 27-52 who live in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. and love the book "Brave New World." After setting your target, you select the amount you're willing to spend on the overall campaign ($25 minimum) and how much you're willing to spend per click ($0.25 minimum). Then, you simply give them your credit card info. How MySpace calculates the value for the placements was not disclosed.

Sounds a lot like AdWords for MySpace. The idea here is that hypertargeting will turn these social display ads into a valuable medium for direct response for small businesses. But how much is this social long realistically worth?

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