• Financial Times, Wednesday, January 28, 2009 11:30 AM

MySpace has begun letting brands take over its homepage and other "safe havens" on the social networking site that appeal to advertisers who are unwilling to put their brands on personal profile pages, the Financial Times reports. Company execs claim the move positions MySpace as a greater threat to the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN in the market for selling display ads to big brands.

"We can get 50 million eyeballs on our homepage so we can compete against the portals," said MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe. "We're not going to compete against Google and their 20,000 employees. But where we've made strides is against guys like MSN and Yahoo on the display and branded business."

After failing to reach its $1 billion revenue target last year, MySpace is looking for more ways to make money from its 130 million user base, although the FT points out that the social networking giant will have its work cut out for it now that the display market has weakened. Chasing Web portal ad campaigns is a change in strategy for MySpace. According to Jeff Berman, president of sales and marketing, MySpace has moved out of being an "experimental" ad buy for marketers. "Instead of going up against other social media sites for experimental dollars that might be five- or six-figure advertising campaigns, we're going up against the portals for seven-figure campaigns," he said.

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