Following the review of the eMarketer piece on MySpace marketing, here is more from Economist.

Economist.com | Articles by Subject | Marketing on MySpace

THE internet sensation that is MySpace continues to grow at an astonishing rate. The social-networking site had 17m unique monthly visitors last July, when Rupert Murdoch recast himself as an internet visionary by buying it for $580m; now it has 54m, and is the most visited website in America. Even if, judging by recent headlines, many visitors are prowling paedophiles or panicking parents spying on their sex-crazed children, at least some of them are the valuable youngsters to which many big firms yearn to sell things.

The underlying challenge is well defined here.

The biggest challenge—for MySpace itself, and for the firms that want to use it to promote their wares—is not to alienate potential customers by being overtly commercial. “We need to be engaging with them, not banging them over the head with brandalism that pollutes their space,” says Kevin George of Unilever. But, he says, “when you deliver 18- to 24-year-old guys content they want to engage with, they don’t mind if it comes from a brand.” This theory will now be put to the test, as MySpacers’ attention is fought over by brands including Procter & Gamble’s Old Spice, State Farm insurance, Elexa by Trojan female condoms, and the US Marine Corps

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