Los Angeles — As Twitter tries to disallow third parties that piggy-back its platform and place advertiser content into users’ posts, the Los Angeles-based duo MySpace and startup Ad.ly, announced today that they have inked an in-stream advertising deal.
According to MySpace, the integration will allow its users to use Ad.ly to publish advertiser content to reach their fans in the MySpace stream updates in exchange for payment, of which the social network will take a cut. Users can decide which messages from advertisers they want to support.
A press release from MySpace says that the integration of Ad.ly’s platform will “bring together key influencer’s with key marketers to broadcast targeted messages to their friends.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“MySpace pioneered tools for musicians and now with this new relationship with Ad.ly we are doing the same for our community of social leaders – allowing monetization of the activity stream,” said Sean Percival, Director of Content Socialization for MySpace. “This agreement provides publishers with the opportunity to associate themselves with brands that represent and reflect their personals online.”
The official statement did not covered the possible impact to user experience on the site following the introduction. In a recent blog post explaining the reasons for attempting to remove such platforms from its own network, Twitter specifically cited that issue as one of its considerations. “Third party ad networks are not necessarily looking to preserve the unique user experience Twitter has created,” wrote Twitter COO Dick Costolo.
Beginning today, MySpace publishers can sign up with Ad.ly and create a profile. Once registered, they can choose which messages from advertisers they want to support, and Ad.ly will deliver the approved messages via the activity stream.
“We are excited to enable MySpace’s most influential users to monetize their audiences by bringing them onto our in-stream advertising platform and connecting them with our stable of top-tier advertisers,” said Derek Rey, Vice President of Sales for Ad.ly. “Adding MySpace’s stream as a new channel on Ad.ly considerably extends the reach of our network making it even more compelling for advertisers looking to be part of the broader stream ecosystem.”
Ad.ly now claims to reach over 50 million unique users on Twitter and MySpace. Advertisers can choose to have their ads sent through Twitter accounts into the Twitter stream or through MySpace accounts into the MySpace stream (or both).
Ad.ly actually claims it will not be affected by Twitter’s ban, apparently since it does not insert ads into users’ updates automatically, but instead requires users to manually approve and publish them. According to Ad.ly’s site, current advertisers in its network include “celebrities” such as Kim Kardashian and musician Pete Wentz, and advertisers have included major brands including Sony, Universal Pictures, and Microsoft.