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New York: News Corp.'s MySpace social- networking website, facing rising competition from Facebook, will let advertisers target users as they go through college, marriage and other stages of life.
MySpace uses algorithms to track changes users make on web pages when they graduate, start working, have kids or get married. Starting early next year, marketers will be able to reach consumers based on the modifications.
"The idea is to make advertisers spend more and more of their budget with us,'' said Arnie Gullov-Singh in an interview in New York this week. He is a vice-president at News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media, which oversees MySpace.
Helping advertisers tailor their campaigns may enable News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch to make more money out of MySpace, bought in 2005 for $580 million, and justify the $16 billion he has said the site is worth. Facebook is winning users faster than MySpace and the sites are adding competing tools for marketers.
MySpace's new service will expand an ad-targeting programme started in July to let marketers reach viewers interested in music, movies or fashion. By year-end, Los Angeles-based MySpace plans to offer 1,000 advertisement categories.
Closely held Facebook, meanwhile, started a service to let users tell their friends about what they bought online and give advertisers access to details about their purchases.
"It's all about making it easy,'' Gullov-Singh said. "That's the challenge of social networks."
Murdoch said last month MySpace is worth at least $16 billion. Advertisement sales on the site helped narrow the fiscal first- quarter loss at the News Corp. division that includes Fox Interactive Media, to $43 million from $73 million.
The unit's revenue jumped 65 per cent to $653 million in the period ended September 30. News Corp. doesn't break out sales for MySpace.
Facebook's worldwide users increased more than six per cent in September from the previous month, while MySpace's viewers gained one per cent, according to data from researcher ComScore.
Advertisement spending on social-networking sites may almost triple to $3.63 billion globally by 2011, according to EMarketer.
News Corp. Class A shares, down one per cent this year, fell 26 cents to $21.27 at 4:01pm in New York Stock Exchange composite trading Friday.
Trend: Social-networking sites become a hit
Web users have flocked to social-networking sites to find friends and colleagues, listen to music and play games.
Their popularity prompted Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, to buy a 1.6 per cent stake in Facebook for $240 million last month. The proposed deal values the company, founded by 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, at $15 billion.
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