Advertising on social media sites

01/11/2007

MySpace, Facebook and Nielsen's Buzzlogic announced their own advertising platforms this month. They all offer advertisers a highly targeted approach to serving online ads. In the case of Facebook and MySpace, the plethora of personal information that is voluntarily handed over is every marketer's dream. Such granular detail is seldom available on a scale like this and everyone is watching to see what the impact of this targeting is going to be.

It will also be interesting to see if MSN is going to take its targeting of search results to Facebook. This is already available in the MSN adcentre where advertisers are able to target hotmail users by age, sex and other demographic features by adding a Live.com search bar. The thought of MSN being able to get their searchbar in front of Facebook's 55 million users might help bring MSN one step closer to acquiring the critical mass they need in order to take on Google.

As social media sites are fast becoming the first port of call for most internet journeys and as the content gets more enticing and stickier, expect a greater turnaround of advertising options and platforms that tap into the wealth of personal data out there.

Back to i-level Search News November 2007