Published: 06 Nov 2007

According to Reuters, smaller but rapidly-growing rival Facebook is also expected to disclose its strategy for serving advertising in and around the personal pages built by more than 48 million users.

MySpace shared that more than 50 advertisers have joined its HyperTargeting programme, which mines the information on the social network's member pages to determine their main interests and what kind of commercial messages they would respond to.

Adam Bain, Chief Technology Officer for Fox Interactive Media, the News Corporation arm that controls MySpace, says the company's new "hyper targeting" system should not generate the same sort of concerns. "There's a big difference between behavioural targeting and our interest-based targeting," he said. "The difference is that our users are in full control - what they say about themselves is public."

Behavioural advertising, he reportedly said was a "guess, based on somebody being interested in something, based on where they surf. We don't need to guess [what people like]. We know because they are telling us what they are passionate about."

As per the information available, MySpace has also announced plans for a self-serve advertising system that would allow users to design, launch and analyse their own advertising campaigns on the site.

Travis Katz, MySpace International Managing Director, admitted that the system is based on the same concept as Google's lucrative AdSense system, but said it is still a different product.

"AdSense was the first targeted advertising product that was open to everyone, and tapped the long tail," Katz added.

"It showed that you don't have to be a huge company to buy media space, you could be a small start-up, a pizza place or a band. We're taking the same concept but it's not just text-based."

Launching early next year, SelfServe by MySpace will allow advertisers to create ads using their own logos, graphics and images, and will provide a built-in analytics system to measure the performance of the ad.

Meanwhile, more than 50 advertisers have signed up the first phase of the Hypertargeting by MySpace platform including Ford, Toyota and Procter & Gamble. The platform is being rolled out in the US and will be extended to English-speaking territories in January.