Think about MySpace, with its 19.4 billion page views this March, and it becomes a foregone conclusion that Rupert Murdoch and Co. will be buying or at least partnering with a search engine to
complement the Web's largest social network. With that kind of traffic, writes Bambi Francisco of Marketwatch, search could easily become the biggest revenue source for the News Corp. company. In
fact, its traffic is so significant, MySpace actually delivers 8.2 percent of Google's traffic--making it the search giant's No. 1 source of traffic according to Hitwise, a traffic measurement firm.
Meanwhile, Microsoft and Yahoo have both just launched major advertising system overhauls. Microsoft's new system will deliver ads across its MSN pages, while Yahoo's major overhaul was just for its
search engine, and early reports indicate it's quite similar to what Google already offers. MSN will let advertisers buy demographics, instead of merely using them as one of many targeting tools.
Francisco takes the idea a step further, arguing that "global communities based on shared interests represent the newest forms of clustering audiences for advertisers." It's opt-in behavior and
contextual targeting at the same time, continually updating itself and growing internally. And where are all these clusters being formed and maintained? Yup, you guessed it, MySpace. What would happen
if you combined search with MySpace's network of 70 million-strong? Extremely targeted results indeed.
Read the whole story at Marketwatch »
