MySpace Announces “Hypertargeting” For Advertisers

The Guardian reports this morning that MySpace have been developing an AdSense type of advertising offering called Hypertargeting and trialling it with 50 advertisers, some of whom have seen 300% rise in response rates for some campaigns.

Travis Katz – MySpace’s international MD says:

“For advertisers, it’s [delivering on] the promise that internet advertising has always been, and users, who have been involved in the testing, like targeted advertising better than generic ads. They don’t like untargeted ads because they feel more intrusive, whereas if ads are relevant and of interest to them they enjoy them.”

The issue of privacy comes up again here because the system is contextual and uses profile data in order to target the ads.

But as I wrote last week I’m not sure users mind so much if the ads they receive are relevant and there’s something in it for them.

Nice to see a publisher ploughing in dough and trying to come up with a system themselves. They’re talking about advertisers being able to drill down into over 100 different segments.

Another player is always good for the planning schedule, but there’s always a tiny danger when someone tries to go it alone, remember BidSmart?

Not sure BTLS had 110m users worldwide though 🙂