Like Google's ad platform, the new MySpace ad platform allows anyone to establish an account and begin targeting ads to a particular demographic. Unlike Google, however, MySpace allows users to build image-based ads on the fly. What's more, advertisers will find the targeting options get exceptionally "granular."

Unlike traditional online advertising demographics, however, the MySpace targeting includes some very MySpace-specific options, including "drinking," "partying," and professional wrestling:

And this type of granularity - providing a true view into its user base - could be the key to MySpace's success.

In fact, when announcing the private beta of the service last year, MySpace claimed that this new "hypertargeting" technology would drastically improved online advertising with results "as high as 300% over demographically tageted ads."

To date, all popular social networking sites have struggled with converting a wealth of users into a sustainable revenue stream. MySpace is no different.

Advertising seems to be the most viable means of doing that. And with the information at its disposal, perhaps no one is better positioned to provide targeted advertising than MySpace.

Will advertisers adopt this "hypertargeted" platform with the same vigor that has catapulted Google to such incredible heights? That remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure, with myAds, MySpace has taken a decided step forward in attempting to drive revenue using its most valuable asset: its users.

In a recent study by Anderson Analytics, the demographics and psychographics of social networking users on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn were revealed. The ultimate goal was to provide marketers with information about users' interests and buying habits as related to their network of choice. The end result is a detailed look at the profiles and habits of social networking users on the web today. Here we'll delve into the details about the specific networks studied.

Facebook

As we've heard before, Facebookers are older and better off. They are more likely to be married (40%), white (80%) and retired (6%) than users of the other social networks. They have the second-highest average income ($61,000) and an average of 121 connections.

In general, there is no one area of interest for this group of social networkers. Out of 45 categories, national news, sports, exercise, travel, and home and garden skewed only slightly higher than the rest. This is likely because this network has the most users and contains a high number of users within each demographic.

Facebookers are also extremely loyal: 75% say Facebook is their favorite site and 59% say they've increased their use in the past 6 months.

MySpace

MySpace users are young and there are less of them on the site than there were in the past. Even those participants who reported using MySpace said they had used the site less in the past six months.

The users of this network are more interested in having fun, specifically in the areas of entertaining friends, humor and comedy, and video games. They're less into exercise than any other network. Oddly enough, despite the youth-skewed demographics, they seek out parenting info more than users of any other network.

The average income of the MySpace user is the lowest ($44,000). They're more likely to be black (9%) or Hispanic (7%) and single (60%) and students (23%).

Twitter

Twitter users are more likely to be employed part-time (16% vs. 11% average) and have an average income of $58,000. The average Twitter user has 28 followers and follows 32 others.

The Twitter group is especially interested in news, restaurants, sports, politics, personal finance, and religion. They're also really into pop culture with music, movies, TV and reading ranking higher than average. Their buying habits reflect those interests, with this group being more likely to buy books, movies, shoes, and cosmetics.

However, this group is not that loyal to the network: 43% said they could live without Twitter.

LinkedIn

It should come as no surprise that a network of business users is the one that has the highest average income ($89,000). Also not surprising is that LinkedIn users joined the network for business or work purposes, specifically for keeping in touch with business networks, job searching, business development, and recruiting.

They tend to like news, employment information, sports, and politics. They're also more likely to be into the gym, spas, yoga, golf and tennis. Interestingly enough - and perhaps because they can afford to do so - LinkedIn users own more electronic gadgets than users of any of the other social networkers. In particular, they enjoy digital cameras, high-definition TVs, DVRs and Blu-ray players.

However, when these guys unwind, they have some interesting interests: gambling and soap operas. 12% seek gambling information online (vs. an average of 7%), while 10% go online for soap-opera content (vs. an average of 5%).

This group is more likely to be male - it's ratio of male to female users is 57% to 43%.

Conclusion

The findings of this study have confirmed in some cases what we already knew about the different demographics of these networks. However, they're still helpful since the more sources that confirm the same demographics, the more likely they are to be accurate. In addition, by surveying social networkers' interests, the study reveals some interesting insights into the various groups, like how one group is more pop-culture focused and another spends more time at the gym. That info is invaluable to marketers looking to best capitalize on their social network ad spending.

Anderson Analytics will be releasing the full report next week. If you're interested, you can check their site for more details.

They are described as "struggling with tech every day, just like you". Yes it's kind of lame, but no doubt there is a market for a tech products portal aimed at non-geeks. 

One thing that makes me feel uneasy about Yahoo Tech is the overwhelming consumer focus - it's all about "buying the latest gear" and is described as "product central". Consumerism is still normal in mainstream media these days, but on the Web I've become used to a more 'prosumer' form of commercialism. This quote from the NY Times interview of Patrick Houston, the general manager of Yahoo Tech, sums up the slightly out-of-kilter mainstream consumer focus:

"Technology is a form of self-expression," Mr. Houston said. "You are what gadgets you carry."

Also the advisor blogs look contrived and sound hokey - "I just zipped over to Amazon to price Microsoft Office: $407.99 for the full version that includes Access. Wow. That's a lot of money." Perhaps the advisors will grow into their role, but it all strikes me as a bit bland and as if they're following a script. Then again, I'm not in any of the target demographics - and I'm not being sarcastic or ironic (like us Gen Xers are wont to do), I really am just saying that I'm not in the target demographics.

But on a positive note, the "tech is made easy" angle is great and I really hope this pulls in the punters. Technology is too damn hard most of the time and "real" people won't get much down-to-earth tech advice by reading my blog, for example. They're probably better off getting their tech product advice from people who are just like them. Plus there are a lot of great 2.0 features in the portal - reviews, ratings, social networking, tag clouds, questions and answers, etc. So like TechCrunch, I'm taking a 'wait and see' approach with this. It looks promising, but at the same time also looks a bit too calculated. More at NY Times.

The Insights analytics tool launched in May and offers free demographic data about viewers. We'd love to see these two features combined. Worried something you said might come across as sexist? If a whole lot of women stopped watching right after you said it - there might be some truth to that! (Who are we kidding? This is YouTube we're talking about.)

The service isn't just tracking departures in pure numbers, either, it's pretty sophisticated:

The Hot Spots tab in Insight plays your video alongside a graph that shows the ups-and-downs of viewership at different moments within the video. We determine "hot" and "cold" spots by comparing your video's abandonment rate at that moment to other videos on YouTube of the same length, and incorporating data about rewinds and fast-forwards.

Numbers are cool - benchmarks relative to the numbers of other related content are even cooler. That's the kind of thing that no video startup could meaningfully offer - just YouTube with its giant network effect and perhaps some of the other giant video services.

We were unable to test the feature ourselves. Neither old nor new videos have the Hot or Not link displayed for us yet. We'll be keeping an eye on them for sure.

In some ways Hot Spots may be more interesting than Insights demographics initially was. Viewer demographics are mostly useful when considering advertising and the effectiveness of targetted promotion. ("How can I get more young men to watch this video on YouTube?" Tough question.) Bounce rate will tell you something about the specifics of your content. We like it.

Those claims are now being further backed up by the Nielsen study, which, in addition to noting the financial discrepancies, also discovered that many social networking users tend to be urbanites, especially those engaged in blogging and tweeting.

The study examined seven of the most popular social networking and blogging sites including Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Twitter, WordPress, ClassmatesOnline, and LinkedIn. Through the Claritas product, Nielsen segments their online panel of 200,000+ participants into demographically and behaviorally distinct groups which include everything from "Young Digerati" to "Heartlanders." After doing so, they found a notable difference between the two top social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace.

According to the research, the top third of lifestyle segments relative to affluence (aka the "richest" users) are 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the lower third. The bottom third segments related to affluence (aka the "poorest") are 37% more likely to use MySpace. Also of note, Facebook users are more likely to use LinkedIn, a site for professional business networking, and again, another factor which points towards the differences in demographics between the two social networks.

Besides confirming the income discrepancies between MySpace and Facebook, Nielsen also discovered that those involved in blogging and tweeting tend to live in more urban areas such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. The 12 "Urban" lifestyle groups tracked by the company are more likely to use Blogger, WordPress, and Twitter than the 22 "Town and Rural" segments. However, there was no mention of these groups being more affluent, just more urban.

The New York Times has an interesting report about companies that offer customized video advertising, such as Spot Runner and Visible World. Marketers are excited about this technology, because it means they can utilize demographics to deliver targeted advertising across several platforms - including television and the Internet. It's also less expense than traditional TV advertising and in some cases means they can route around traditional ad agencies, by creating the ads themselves using the tools offered by services like Spot Runner and Visible World.

So what does this all mean for the advertising world, the media industry and the ever expanding Internet?

What Spot Runner and Visible World do

Not only is it becoming far cheaper to produce video ads, it is also becoming cheaper to distribute and customize them. This effectively is making videos easily stored and re-used, much like digital photos and music have become in recent years. It removes a large chunk of production costs, as marketers no longer have to film the commercial themselves - Spot Runner allows you to mash-up an ad from their ad library. It also allows the creator of the content to reap the rewards for each customer that chooses their ad.

Spot Runner

How the technology is being used

This simplified process of targeted advertising is ideal for small companies that want to appear big, and for big companies that want to appear small. In that sense, the world becomes a little flatter. Small businesses can operate within their budget to get a professional ad; while large companies can tailor their ads to appeal to consumers across the board, varying the product they sell or the spin their ad takes.

The format of these commercials makes them easily spread via television, or the internet - and I'm sure mobile devices aren't too far behind in becoming another mainstream platform for distribution.

A Ford commercial from Visible World

The Long Tail of Video Commercials

Services offered by companies such as Spot Runner and Visible World cater to a broad base of marketers, and create a platform for creativity and replicated data. The ability to operate over the Web makes editorial accessibility an afterthought and increases the number of niche markets an advertiser can display their product for. The media world has departed from so many traditional models; and the Internet has enabled the majority of those changes. Now the world of video marketing is following suit, catering to the long tail of social networks and specific demographics - fragmenting themselves in the same manner.

Essentially this allows marketers to take advantage of targeted marketing in ways they've always dreamed of.

Implications

What's the larger picture here? And what does it really mean for marketers to not only gain increased access to demographic data, but to use it for more and more targeted advertising?

Privacy issues are and will continue to be raised regarding the use of targeted marketing. Much of our activity on the web, and even with our television's remote control, gives companies data to feed their advertising strategies. Also the advertising job market will shift in reaction to the oncoming automation options, which are becoming more available to marketers.

The Internet and mobile devices will become extremely important for the future of this type of advertising. It will also become integrated within the widening Internet video culture, and probably closely associated with user-generated content. This means consumers may have a larger role in the distribution of these commercials; perhaps customizing ads to be played along with their own videos, even becoming the most powerful channel by which these commercials are distributed.

What are your thoughts on customized video ads -- are we in the midst of a sea change in video advertising, enabled by Web services like Spot Runner and Visible World?

Fair enough. And yes Michael did quickly fix up the "Roger" faux pas :-)

Frequency

So to the next part of the report. Page 3 had a chart and some analysis with the heading 'Market for RSS Newsreaders Equal in the Home and Business'. The question asked of respondents was: "Which of the following applications installed on your primary home or work computer do you use monthly or more frequently?". The options given were: Search toolbar, desktop search app, RSS newsreader app, RSS newsreader service, and "None".

Both types of RSS newsreaders had the same figures - 5% of respondents used them at work and 6% at home. I found it interesting that the same percentage of respondents used desktop RSS newsreaders and web-based newsreaders - this is worth tracking in the coming months and years. Will one of desktop or web-based start to pull ahead? My money's on web-based, but valid arguments can be made either way.

Back to the report... the use of RSS newsreaders paled into comparison with the search toolbar (62% home, 27% work). So all in all, RSS newsreaders in both desktop and web variety are still very much a minority tool - 12% of consumers use a variety of RSS newsreader, according to this report. But JupiterResearch notes:

While this rings true, I couldn't see any evidence to back it up. How do they know the market is growing and that there is "increased awareness"?

Demographics

Turning now to page 4, where the report analyzes the demographic profile of RSS users. Here the demographics of RSS Users is compared to those of Online users. We find out that the female to male ratio is higher for RSS Users - 55% are female, 45% are male. It's 51% female, 50% male for Online users (I presume the extra 1% is due to rounding). So that is a surprise, especially given all the recent talk about the lack of attention for female bloggers.

For the age demographics, more 18-24 year olds use RSS (23% compared to a 14% representation online). But 35+ is still the number 1 age group both with RSS users and online (56% are RSS users, compared to 64% online). 25-34 years are 22% in both RSS and online averages. JupiterResearch notes that:

I take this to mean that no specific age group can be targeted at the expense of the others. But the question remains: does each age group have different uses for RSS newsreaders? For example, it's well known that LiveJournal is extremely popular amongst young people and it's mainly used as a social tool. Whereas older people (and I include myself in this, even though I fit in the middle demographic right now) are more likely to use RSS newsreaders to keep up with news and business. The JupiterResearch report doesn't address any of those issues, but I suspect marketers would want to find out about it.

Page 4 also refers to income and Net experience, and broadband vs dial-up. RSS users are slightly richer and more have broadband (41% have broadband, compared to 33% online avg). Somewhat surprising is the Net experience figures, which show that more "newbies" and "intermediates" use RSS than the online average (25% for RSS users, compared to 17% online average).

JupiterResearch finishes page 4 with this comment:

That's followed by advice to ditch the orange 'XML' button - which every RSS techie knows we have to do... we just don't know what to replace it with, apart from multiple vendor buttons.

Summary

I'll leave the report summary and recommendations for my final post in this series, which I hope to have done by end of this week. In the meantime, feel free to comment below on what you think it all means.

The post informed advertisers that they now had access to two of the most frequently requested targeting filters: language targeting and location targeting. Obviously, the language targeting makes sense, especially considering that Facebook is currently available in 40 languages with over 60 more in development. In fact, it's somewhat surprising that this feature was not available until now.

When a particular language is entered into a box on the ad signup form, the approximate reach of the selection will appear at the bottom. For example, if an advertiser enters in a location of "United States" and the language "Spanish," the approximate reach will display 1,081,820 - the number of Spanish-speaking Facebook users in the States.

Facebook Knows Where You Live

However, it's the location-based targeting which is the most interesting of the two updates. Here, advertisers can narrow their focus in order to target users within a certain mile radius of a particular location. This feature is currently available only in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada for targeting cities and/or targeting within 10, 25, or 50 miles of the cities selected.

With this feature, advertisers can tap into the detailed demographics that Facebook users so willingly share along with their age, sex, relationship status, educational background, etc. (You didn't really think you were just filling that info out to share with friends, did you?)

Will Hyperlocal Ads Come Next?

As advertisers better learn to target narrower sets of users, we wonder if it's only a matter of time before Facebook introduces a mobile, location-based component to their network which would allow users share their exact (or nearly exact) location within a city. Imagine the possibilities for extreme hyperlocal ads then! What if advertisers could target all the users who updated how they were sipping lattes at Starbucks, for instance? Or perhaps the ads could target users who posted that they've checked in at a Vegas hotel for a big conference? These are the sorts of niche demographics that advertisers can only dream about now, but the technology already exists to enable that level of precision.

Today, a handful of early-adopters are currently sharing this type of information through Facebook's News Feed and status updates courtesy of the mobile social networking service Brightkite. If you're friends with any Brightkite users, you'll likely see the location updates pop into your feeds from time to time thanks to that service's ability to integrate with Facebook by way of Facebook Connect. This relatively new authentication technology allows users to log into the Brightkite service with their Facebook account and then shoot their updates from Brightkite back into their profiles. If Facebook advertisers could tap into the sort of niche demographics that Brightkite could give access to, it could open up a whole world of possibilities for hyperlocal ad targeting.

The only stumbling block to implementing this type of targeting is the same one that always comes up: those pesky users and their sense of privacy. Would Facebook users revolt if, all of a sudden, Facebook knew exactly where they were and served up ads that did too? The Facebook ads seem creepy enough now as they're often far more accurate and relevant than some users are comfortable with. What would hyperlocal ads look like then? Far creepier, we would imagine. "Do you really need that second Frappuccino? Why not head to the gym instead - it's only 3 blocks away!" Yikes.

But while it's true that some users would balk at that level of invasiveness, others would welcome it. In fact, Facebook is actively cultivating a sense among its users that going online is no longer a private activity. By tucking away their privacy controls deep within their settings, they're encouraging the average user to overshare personal information with people who would have never known them in that way before - people like mom, dad, and the boss, for example.

In time, the sense of openness Facebook fosters among a person's social - and perhaps professional - network will wear away at that sense of privacy until users aren't just tolerant of these hyperlocal ads, they will welcome them and they'll expect them. Google's recent foray into more targeted advertising will only help further this cause, too.

Of course, in this imagined scenario, Facebook users who want to maintain their privacy would be able to do so - they could just opt-out of the feature. But maintaining online privacy is something that will, over time, become harder and harder to do. There will be more settings to adjust, more configuring of block lists, and more checkboxes to mark. Most users won't bother with it - they will just adjust to the changes and to the new reality of the smarter (and yes, perhaps scarier) ads.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, teens are more likely to use text messaging than Twitter for keeping up with their friends. Today's teens feel somewhat uncomfortable with the public nature of the communication that takes place on Twitter, and, besides, they just don't see the point in broadcasting what they're doing to the whole world. Yet even without this age group's participation, Twitter has seen amazing success, proving the point that a new technology does not have to be adopted by this young group of users in order to make it big.

Twitter's Youth Sees Growth

Although Twitter didn't attract teens at the outset, that could still change. In fact, it looks like that change may already be underway. A newly released chart from comScore breaks down the age groups of Twitter users and plots each group's growth over time, relative to audience. The most surprising revelation from this chart is the steep incline seen in the age group 12-24. Over the past few months, this group's participation levels have been increasing dramatically.

In reading the chart, a score of "100" means that the age group on Twitter is represented in perfect proportion to how much that age group uses the rest of the Internet as a whole. Go over 100 and that means the age group is represented more heavily on Twitter than they are represented on the rest of the web. In July, those aged 12-24 scored a "121" - a score that was only in the mid-70s a mere six months ago.

Statistics Can be Misleading

But wait - a quick glance at these statistics can be misleading. At first, it appears that the chart simply shows the increasing participation levels of teens (and young adults) on Twitter. While that may be true, it's important to note that the actual number of younger users on Twitter is still much lower than those of their adult counterparts. In fact, the New York Times recently reported that only 11% of Twitter users are aged 12 to 17, according to comScore.

Plus, there's the fact that the age group 12-24 represents an odd way of breaking up the demographics. Why not 12-18 instead? The way Twitter's user base is sliced, there's no way to tell how many users are teens and how many are young adults in their 20s.

Finally, the chart is showing audience growth compared to the rest of the Internet as a whole. That's also an interesting way of charting the demographics of Twitter, to say the least.

All that being said, the data seen here is still valuable to some extent. It's interesting to see this market segment's growth, even if it's sliced and diced in this odd way. But does this mean that teens are going to start tweeting sometime soon? Let us know what you think in the comments.

I've been hearing whispers that Google will integrate their social network Orkut with the mobile social networking app they acquired last year, Dodgeball. While it's not rocket science to make the connection between the two products (both are social networking), the reasons to join the two are becoming more compelling... Here are some of them:

1) Social networking has been the biggest thing going in 2006 (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, etc). And it looks like mobile will be big next year. So SNS + Mobile seems the logical sequel.

2) There is also the trend of meta-social networks, like Marc Canter's PeopleAggregator. It was actually the latest New Scientist magazine which rang a little bell in my mind about this. An article called Living Online: This is your space (full article not online yet unfortunately) concluded by saying that an individual's identity will be managed by a meta-network, which we will carry with us "in small wireless devices so that our virtual identities become seamlessly integrated with the real world." That online/offline balance is one of the main things mobile Web has going for it. So meta-SNS + Mobile is another trend I think we'll see emerge...

3) Peter Dawson pointed me to Mihai Parparita's blog, who has a great post entitled Facebook meets Dodgeball. In it Mihai writes:

"...I thought it would be cool to syndicate my Dodgeball check-ins into my Facebook profile, via their blog (i.e. RSS feed) to notes import feature. It worked pretty well [...] and it's sort of neat that these two social networking sites are open even slightly, allowing such co-mingling of data."

So co-mingling of SNS data, to borrow Mihai's neat phrase, is another trend that is hotting up.

4) Demographics are similar between Orkut and Dodgeball. All evidence points to Dodgeball being used mostly by young people. In Brazil, home to 65-70% of the Orkut user base, it is mostly 13-30 year olds who use Orkut. And in my recent Top Web Apps in Brazil post, it was established that Brazil is a sophisticated Web market (at least in the main cities).

In terms of mobile usage, Brazil is nearly at 100 Million users according to a recent report:

"The number of Brazilians owning mobile phones rose to 94.9 million in August, up 2% from July, according to preliminary figures released Monday by telecommunications regulator Anatel. Brazilian mobile phone ownership rose more than 20% when compared with September of 2005, when the number of mobile phones was 78.9 million."

While obviously Orkut + Dodgeball is not all about Brazil, it's probably a good pointer to how complementary the two services are. However I imagine Google will target the US market first, as they always do.

Summary

While there's no firm evidence yet that Orkut will merge with Dodgeball, I believe it's just a matter of time. John Battelle even kind of predicted it back in May 2005, with this comment: "What is Dodgeball? I dunno, but is seems like Orkut + Mobile done right, I think."

In any case, the high level trends point to it happening soon: SNS + Mobile; meta-SNS + Mobile; Co-mingling of data between SNS; similar demographics.