MySpace's new ad network lets musicians self-promote

MySpace, the social network turned music repository, has unveiled the beta of "Promote Your..." a self-service advertising system that allows users to publish and manage banners on its network that click through to musicians' profiles.

The service is geared toward independent musicians and businesspeople, offering audience targeting, efficacy tracking, and an advertising budget range from $25 to $10,000. It also offers an ad creation wizard interface or the ability to upload pre-made 300 x 250 or 728 x 90 .JPG, .GIF, or .PNG banners that are less than 600K in size.

The self-service ads can be targeted to such criteria as gender, age, or geographic location. Geography can be tailored to a location as specific as a certain ZIP code, or as generally as the entire US. Less concrete criteria such as interest keywords can be used for targeting as well, but MySpace has limited these to a category and genre pairing (for example "music: country" or "sports: basketball").

Google this month announced the growth of its TV Ads service, which allows users to create and manage their own television advertisements on NBC Universal cable networks and on the Dish Network.

While it does not herald a DIY advertising revolution of any sort just yet, the increase of amateur, or wizard-created ad content will undoubtedly alter the structure of advertising as a whole.