I got a call from Mitchell Hartman of public radio’s Marketplace yesterday as he was doing a brief story about advertising on MySpace and social spaces. I wasn’t giving him very good soundbite, I knew. I’ve done better. But then one came out like a satisfying burp. Excuse me. I feel better now. So did he. The end of the story:
Hartman: News Corp is pushing this kind of hyper-targeted advertising on MySpace, but so far, advertisers have been cautious. They don’t want their ads showing up next to off-color content. Jeff Jarvis teaches journalism at the City University of New York. He says we’re smarter than that.
Jarvis: We can figure out that if your ad ends up next to a flaming cat video, you’re not in favor of setting cats on fire.
Hartman: But MySpace users may be so busy watching that flaming cat video or talking to their friends about it they won’t even see the ads roll by.
Flaming cats:
