Briefs

By Zachary Rodgers, The ClickZ Network, May 6, 2008

Splicing relevant ad messages into the social graph was supposed to be a cinch, given all the personal data profile creators leave lying around. But the big networking platforms and their ad reps have struggled to find the right formula. Google admitted in January it has searched in vain to monetize its vast inventory on Orkut and partner sites including MySpace. MySpace has its own data extraction project, dubbed hyper-targeting, yet still sells inventory in bulk rather than by niche segment. Facebook is in a similar conundrum.

What's the problem? For one thing, it can be hard to separate out useful data in a person's profile. For another, the meaning of "friend" is relative, making it hard to "[get] into the conversations that already happen between people," as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg grandly forecast marketers would do last November. Put another way, when someone claims a connection to 400 people, it's tough to tell who the real buddies are.

A behavioral targeting firm called Media6degrees said it's engineered a workaround to the dual problems of data and relationship glut. Rather than look at a person's friend list, the company uses a combination of cookies and ad server logs to pinpoint a person's interests and generate anonymous profiles of her real friends.

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