• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, November 6, 2007

Giving marketers of modest means access to targeted display advertising, MySpace has launched an ad platform for small business owners, brands, and politicians to purchase, create and analyze the performance of ads throughout its social network.

The "SelfServe" platform is part of MySpace's larger "HyperTargeting" initiative, which was introduced this summer, and allows marketers to connect with specific user groups based on self-expressed interests available on MySpace profiles.

"Targeting is for everyone--from the smallest band to the biggest brand--now MySpace provides a solution for anyone," said Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer for Fox Interactive Media.

Since July, MySpace has allowed about 50 leading advertisers-- including Ford Motor, Procter & Gamble, and Yum Brands' Taco Bell chain--to target 10 interest groups, including autos, fashion, finance, health, sports, and video games. Along with standout keywords, the algorithms determine ad placement based on a member's groups, friends, age, gender, and prior ad engagement history.

After more than six months of testing, MySpace launched its "interest targeting" technology on a broad scale, allowing brand advertisers to target consumers based on the information each shares with friends and family on a regular basis. The News Corp. unit expects its HyperTargeting platform to expand so that advertisers can choose from more than 100 target consumer categories in the near future.

"What we're talking about is very new--the ability to make [marketing] decisions based on user interests," Peter Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. unit that owns MySpace, said at a conference recently.

SelfServe gives smaller players the customized tools to upload ads and select target audiences based on geographic, demographic and user interest criteria. In turn, MySpace is hoping to tap a far larger group of advertisers.

"There are 23 million small businesses in the U.S., and less than a million advertise online," said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace. "SelfServe is designed for the millions of businesses that don't advertise online today--we want to bring that new class of advertisers to MySpace."

Google has risen to dominance by providing self-service tools for small merchants to match text ads to users' search queries. The search giant, which has an existing ad partnership on MySpace, is now branching out into display advertising through the still-pending acquisition of DoubleClick.

MySpace, however, has its sights on a rival more like itself. "I want to compare and contrast with Facebook," Levinsohn told investors and analysts at the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference recently. "We've never really had a direct competitor with MySpace."

Facebook recently began preparing a highly targeted ad system powered by the personal information provided by its members. This week, the privately owned Facebook is expected to begin implementing complex algorithms, which can predict members' receptivity to ads.