MySpace Intros Advertising Community Builder Platform

April 21, 2008

MySpace has made a beta launch of the Community Builder advertising platform. The new platform gives MySpace advertisers the ability to build, maintain and customize brand profiles while also providing guaranteed valuable analytics to help them gauge campaign performance and make real-time adjustments to maximize effectiveness. The platform is currently being beta tested by Deep Focus.

“Community Builder is the next evolution of the MySpace brand profile -– a more flexible solution that puts creative freedom and control into the hands of advertisers to ensure that a community stays dynamic and interesting in between major campaigns and projects,” said Bryce Emo, Senior Vice President of Sales, MySpace.

“This new platform enables marketers to fulfill long-term communication strategies with consumers who engage in and friend their communities. It’s an opportunity to connect with users faster and easier than ever before.”

The Community Builder platform is available in two versions, ‘Self-Service’ and ‘Full-Service’, enabling advertisers to effectively choose the solution that is most relevant for the brand and community depending on the level of customization required. Both versions give advertisers 24/7 access to update community elements (blogs, bulletins), increased analytics (via Hitbox) and increased profile functionality, giving them the control to create and maintain brand momentum with users in an unprecedented way.

Self-Service is aimed at advertisers who are familiar with MySpace and who have advanced design coding skills (CSS and XHTML) with the time and resources required to maintain a community.

Full-Service, in contrast, is a complete solution provided by MySpace for advertisers who require a premium in-house production solution with a fully-customized level of service that fully utilizes the wide variety of in-house MySpace experts in user experience, community design, and interactive element solutions (including sweepstakes and contests).

“Community Builder allows our clients to connect with potential brand evangelists in an unprecedented way,” said Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus. “The flexible platform provides access to solutions and value propositions that enable brands to engage with a new generation of consumers and the freedom to update and manage communities in real-time. It’s a powerful tool that can help build community literally -- and figuratively.”

The Community Builder advertising platform will be available in the US and builds upon MySpace's advertising model, which includes customized communities, multi-platform integrated marketing campaigns, and the new advertising platforms HyperTargeting and SelfServe which empower users such as small business owners, bands, and politicians to purchase, create and analyze the performance of ads throughout the MySpace network.