MySpace has now officially launched a self-serving ad platform. With MyAds, users would be able to create their own ad banners and use demographic targeting.

MyAds claims to provide more features than its competitors. Some of its top features include:

1. Create your own ads

   Myspace provides all the necessary templates and instructions to build your own add.

2. Audience Targeting

   You can choose which audience can view your ad. For example: An advertisement on home loans can be blocked for kids or teenagers and displayed to audience above 30 years of age.

3. Choosing Budget

   You can fix your maximum budget for the day so that you will not experience unanticipated costs.

4. Performance Monitoring

   Real-time data on the performance of your ad campaigns are possible which can help you better determine the demographics and the audience your campaign reaches.

MyAds would become competitive and popular as Google Adsense if MySpace uses them on its own website alone. Currently, MySpace looks like targeting only Musicians. However, MySpace states that the service is for everybody.

With more number of players in the internet advertising market, advertisers may get the edge with lower PPCs. But this would also affect publishers to a large extent.

Microsoft has been spending billions of dollars to get back its dominion over Internet search. Recent reports from comScore shows that 5.5 billion Microsoft ad views were displayed during the month of June.

The main promotion being Windows Live Search, Live search cash back program and Live Search Club games. Though Microsoft has been promoting Live Search for some years now, there is not much progress in their search users.

Recently, Microsoft had a deal with HP that all HP systems have Microsoft Live Search preinstalled in their computers. Promotional campaigns like these would attract short time visitors. However, to be successful in the longer run, Microsoft has to come up with something new and interesting.

The reports also mention that Fox Interactive Media was the top display advertisement publisher for the month of June.

A new survey based on 300 advertisers states that advertisers prefer quality of search traffic than clicks in pay-per-click search engines. Eighty-five percent of the online advertisers consider that quality of search traffic is the single and most important factor followed by bid prices and quality of search traffic.

It is interesting to note that when similar advertisers were surveyed a year ago, they voted for Bid Prices to be the most important considerations. In today’s world, an untargeted traffic would not yield results or a transaction. Targeted customers are the most important. Marketers or advertisers are not looking for a click to their website, but for real productive e-commerce traffic that would directly result in measurable returns in the investment on pay-per-click programs.
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