MySpace Advertising Alternatives

There are 2 natural reactions that any advertiser will have to marketing with MySpace.

One is to run standard ad units on the site. But advertisers are really limited to banner ads on the top of the site, and a couple different placements on a user's homepage profile, or when a user is logging in. Due to the fact that MySpace allows profile customization, ad inventory is, for the most part, limited to the banner ad across the top of the page.

The other option is to create a profile. But many advertisers don't do much with it once the profile has been created. For this type of marketing to be effective, advertisers would need to be really active with this profile, communicating with users and actively seeking many of them out. Unfortunately, most of the advertiser created profile's I've seen have a "create it and forget it" attitude.

So what other types of options are available? You may have heard about MySpace promoting "secret shows" on the site. In order to get tickets, MySpace users must add the "secret shows" profile to the "top 8 friends" that appear on their profile homepage. Having this profile in user's "top 8" means they'll get visibility well beyond just adding the advertiser profile as a friend. Remember that MySpace gets a ton of unique visitors, but even more page views. According to a Business Week article in November of last year, MySpace had 11.6 billion page views in October, making it #4 in terms of traffic, bested only by Yahoo!, MSN and Time Warner.

I think this is an interesting way to leverage MySpace from a marketing perspective, and something that advertisers wanting to use MySpace in a unique and interesting way could learn from.

Here's a scenario of how a similar program could be leveraged by an advertiser. Let's say Ubisoft wanted to advertise their upcoming Xbox 360 game, Dead Rising. They create a "Dead Rising" MySpace profile, and MySpace users that add "Dead Rising" to their "top 8" will receive a unique cheat code for the game when it launches.

The next time someone asks you about how to leverage MySpace from a marketing perspective, think beyond just advertising or creating a profile. MySpace, too, is surely wanting to find new channels for advertising revenue beyond profile creation and standard ad units.

Link via AdPulp.