By GREGORY SCHMIDT
Published: December 25, 2008

THE bright lights of Broadway draw millions of people to New York’s theater district every year, but having a celebrity’s name on a marquee does not always guarantee a full house. So to fill more seats, theater producers are turning to MySpace to make a few new friends. Broadway, like every other segment of the entertainment industry, has been using the Internet as a marketing tool for years. The Web sites of Broadway shows typically come with the requisite biographies of the cast and creative team, critics’ blurbs and a link to buy tickets online.

Lately, however, producers have been stepping up their online presence in an effort to spread word of mouth among Internet users, a concept known as viral marketing.

Broadway productions now offer pages on social networking sites. For example, the MySpace page for “In the Heights” features a blog with updates about the show, widgets that fans can embed in their own MySpace pages, a jukebox that plays songs from the show and several music videos from the cast. These include a parody of the song “Umbrella” called “Abuela,” and a spoof of “High School Musical” that features Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s lyricist and star, singing and dancing in Central Park.

Mr. Miranda has created several videos for the Web, including a series called “Legally Brown,” which lampooned the MTV reality show that chose a replacement for the lead in “Legally Blonde.” In the series, which is at legallybrownonbroadway.com and on YouTube, Broadway stars like Matthew Morrison of “South Pacific,” Allison Janney of the coming “9 to 5: The Musical” and Cheyenne Jackson of “Xanadu” competed to become the next piragua vendor on “In the Heights.”

“It’s another creative outlet,” said Mr. Miranda, who has posted 16 videos on YouTube for his show since it opened Off Broadway. Mr. Miranda said he was able to attract such high-profile names to the “Legally Brown” project after “In the Heights” won the Tony Award for best musical.

“I call ‘Legally Brown’ the most decadent use of post-Tony capital ever,” he said, explaining that he reached out to people he met on the awards show circuit to satirize their celebrity status in his videos. “We’re surrounded by some of the brightest talents around in the theater community, and it’s a shame not to take advantage of that.”

But Broadway is still feeling its way through uncharted territory.

“It’s been more about casting the net and seeing what works,” said Sara Fitzpatrick, the director for the interactive division at SpotCo, an advertising agency based in New York that has worked on campaigns for “In the Heights,” “Shrek the Musical” and “Chicago.” “We’re still in the newer stages.”

Ms. Fitzpatrick says the trend to use viral marketing techniques in theater has been growing in the last year, and it is becoming an important part of a marketing campaign, which also includes traditional elements like newspaper, television and outdoor advertising.

“Shrek the Musical” has its own social network at www.shrekster.com, a Web site with profiles of the show’s characters and the latest news from the kingdom of Duloc. Giving theater fans access to a show through the Internet helps generate interest and sell tickets. Paid attendance for the 2007-8 season dipped 0.2 percent, to 12.27 million, from the previous season, according to the Broadway League, an industry trade association. The decline was attributed mainly to a stagehands’ strike that shut down most Broadway productions for 19 days in November 2007.

There is anecdotal evidence that viral marketing draws theatergoers from all over the world. Mr. Miranda said that he had met fans at the stage door after a performance who told him that his videos inspired them to come to New York to see his show. Some fans even pay tribute with their own videos.

After seeing a video on YouTube of a 10-year-old from New Orleans rapping songs from “In the Heights,” Mr. Miranda said he was impressed.

“He had never seen the show; he just watched clips online,” Mr. Miranda said. “He did this on his own, just because he loved the show.”

When he found out the boy, Nicholas Dayton, and his mother were coming to New York to see the show, Mr. Miranda invited them backstage after a performance to film a video of Nicholas singing the show’s finale with the cast.

Kevin McCollum, a producer of shows like “Avenue Q,” “In the Heights,” “Rent” and “[title of show],” said he was a strong advocate of using the Internet to reach a niche audience that might not be accessible through traditional marketing. His theory is that the more people gravitate toward technology, the more they will hunger for human interaction.

“Technology is the tool, not the destination,” Mr. McCollum said. “The destination is a live audience.”

Marketing agencies are experimenting with ways to benefit from having that live audience gathered to see a show. Situation Interactive, a firm based in New York, used marketing campaigns that incorporated mobile phones for shows like “Blue Man Group” and “Mamma Mia!,” offering audience members a chance to win prizes by sending text messages from their cellphones. For “Hair,” which is headed to Broadway in March, fans will get the chance to text their reviews to the show’s Web site immediately after a performance.

This concept, known as mobile marketing, is a natural fit for live entertainment, said Situation Interactive’s president, Damian Bazadona, because people tend to have cellphones with them at all times.

“Mobile is entrenched in everything we do,” Mr. Bazadona said. “It’s happening full swing. It’s becoming part of the overall marketing plan.”

Situation Interactive experimented with new technology in other campaigns as well. The firm worked with the producers of “Billy Elliot” to create videos that chronicled the rehearsals of the three boys who rotate as the lead character.

For “9 to 5: The Musical,” the firm is working on an online game in which players can upload pictures of their bosses for a shooting gallery. The show’s Web site will feature personalized e-cards, featuring the voice of Dolly Parton greeting recipients.

To help the producers of “Sunday in the Park With George” build a relationship with theatergoers, Situation Interactive set up a Web site that allowed users to digitally recreate Georges Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” with personalized dots. For “November,” the playwright David Mamet contributed a blog, writing as the play’s lead character, the president of the United States. Fans were invited to participate in online karaoke for “Hairspray” and a digital ticket rush for “Spring Awakening.”

“The challenge of marketing is how to target people,” said Mr. McCollum, the producer.

Of course, viral marketing is not suited to every show. Some Broadway shows still rely on a more traditional campaign. The trick is to find a balance.

“In the theater, there is only one proven marketing technique that works: to generate word of mouth,” Mr. McCollum said. “Everything else is a shot in the dark.”

A topic I’ve tackled several times here at Mashable has been the question of Hulu versus YouTube in terms of their advertising strategies. My friend Frederic Lardinois over at ReadWriteWeb brought the topic up today in reference to news from the Financial Times regarding the revenue of the two video business units.

In the past, though, tons of bloggers have taken potshots at YouTube for not realizing the potential of the $1.65 billion investment by Google. One of the more recent times I got on this particular merry-go-round was back in June in response to Mark Cuban, who said that Hulu was in danger of roundly kicking YouTube’s ass in terms of viewership and monetization. Back then, as they do now, the traffic numbers simply tell a different story.

As you can see, back in June through October of this month, Hulu has seen significant gains relative to their current traffic patterns (very likely due to the highly watched election videos and Sarah Palin – watch for this line to drop in December). Compared to YouTube? The difference is still monstrous.

How is it possible, then, that the Financial Times is able to make statements like this:

Neither company breaks out its advertising revenues but Arash Amel, analyst at Screen Digest, forecasts that in 2008 YouTube will generate about $100m in the US, compared with about $70m at Hulu. Next year both sites will generate about $180m in the US, he says. YouTube currently earns around half of its revenues in the US, while Hulu has not yet launched internationally.

Setting aside any quibbles we may have with their estimates, for a moment, very simply put – the Hulu sales team is lightyears ahead of what’s being done at Google.

Aren’t Advertisers Just Scared of YouTube?

That’s the phrase that pays when pundits and analysts come together to talk about monetization efforts on UGC video. Frederic mentioned it in his writeup. Henry Blodgett said something similar when he deigned to advise Google to “throw in the towel” on YouTube. The issue doesn’t have anything to do with advertiser readiness to throw down with the money, and more to do with the limited avenues to do so.

Just as a proof-of-concept on this theory, give yourself a five minute limit to figure out how to put an ad on the side-bar on a Google search result.  Even if you don’t know where to start, you should get there with four minutes to spare, assuming you know how to … you know … type a Google query.

Now try the same thing with YouTube.

Not so easy, is it?  If you’re lucky, on your third or fourth search query, you’ll turn up this page, which YouTube dubs its online media kit. If you have the patience, you can spend about a half-hour watching Googlers tell you how awesome it is to advertise on YouTube, complete with some product manager playing with his plastic dinosaurs.

This is what I’m talking about.  If you actually watch these videos, you get the picture that YouTube is running advertisements on only a fraction of those gazillions of page-views and video views. In fact, they only run ads on videos that participate in the “Partner Program,” a program not easy to figure out how to join, either.

Just think of the money YouTube could make if they ran just a stupid little text-based AdSense unit on every page on YouTube. We started running through this intellectual exercise the last time this topic came up here – we determined that YouTube needed to monetize (generously) 1% of their traffic to thoroughly trounce Hulu.

It’s easy to see here that the same minds that brought us search ads aren’t working on what’s at YouTube, otherwise they’d have this problem licked by now. For further proof, take a gander at your AdWords account, and try to find the button that allows you to advertise on YouTube.  I’ll save you some time – it isn’t there, not even next to the “advertise on radio” or “advertise on TV” links.

Hulu Doesn’t Have an Easy Advertiser Form Either. How Are They Doing So Well?

That’s because they don’t need one. As Blodget notes in his write-up, Hulu gives more money back to its partners than YouTube does with theirs.  What Blodget fails to mention is that this is a pointless statistic, since Hulu is essentially a puppet entity for News Corporation and NBC Universal.

This means that they don’t really need to rely on an in-house sales team as YouTube does, at least not throughout the year. They do the bulk of their big name, high dollar selling at what’s called the “upfronts” every year. Millions of dollars trade hands after the May sweeps at these star-studded events, and YouTube hasn’t made inroads to tap into this market.

If they sold at the upfronts, it isn’t like it would land them the type of money Hulu’s getting.  Even the most watched content on YouTube still doesn’t have the international brand recognition of your average show on the WB. Simply put, the TV networks still have decades of brand recognition built up, and YouTube is technically still a toddler.

As Soon as Google and YouTube Start Playing to Their Strengths…

Here’s the point I’m driving at – YouTube has been doing things right in almost every category so far when it comes to growing the brand and traffic to the site.

They have a lumbering behemoth in terms of traffic, and it looks to me like they’re trying to outlast some dinosaurs of Old Media just long enough so that some of these pesky copyright issues outmode themselves (either by these Old Media companies dying off themselves, or their grasp of New Media catching up with reality). That’s frankly the only explanation I can think of behind why they’d not treat their YouTube traffic like every other type of traffic contained within the Google family.

Playing to their weaknesses, and by that I mean trying to compete with Hulu and other studio produced aggregators head on… it’s akin to looking for the golden needles in the haystack, instead of feeding all that hay into the gold-spinning wheel they have sitting in the back.

November 16, 2008 – 7:03 pm PDT – by Sarah Evans

Sarah Evans is the director of communications at Elgin Community College (ECC) in Elgin, Illinois. She also authors a PR and social media blog.

The inaugural celebration of International Baby Wearing Week also serves as a platform for the Motrin brand’s launch of their new ads (below) targeting what else, “baby wearing moms.” Touting the tagline “we feel your pain,” the Motrin IB ad in particular takes a snarky approach towards moms who carry babies in a pouch or sling.

And on the surface at least, the company accomplished the ultimate in outreach goals:

1. Reach target audience
2. Get them to engage in dialogue about your brand
3. Find way to track message and outreach

Motrin Commercial

The Wrong Move

Sounds great, right? Wrong. While the ads are the number one discussion trend on the microblogging platform, Twitter, the overall grade? A great big “Fail Whale”.

Avid Twitter user and mom, Jessica Gottlieb is the originator of the conversation via her Twitter network. The dialogue (and overwhelming outrage) is growing exponentially. Already there are thousands of comments on #motrinmoms and almost all are negative with many saying they will no longer use the brand name product.

It took only a few short hours to go viral. Katja Presnal, founder of SkimbacoLifestyle.com and LadybugLandings.com, wants Motrin to know that the ads themselves are giving moms headaches.

Presnal says, “Moms have brains, don’t treat us like that and learn to market for us. We spend 75% of our families’ money.”
Will Motrin Respond?

The world of social media is reaching a tipping point and my bet is yes, they will respond.
This is their opportunity to engage and connect with a powerful (and influential) audience. (Perhaps the one they should have consulted before launching the ads?) So, what should they do first?

1. Deliver an apology. (From a person, not just the brand.)
2. Offer an outlet for people (not just the target audience) to share their feelings and emotions – especially important – let people share how they felt when they watched the ads.
3. Talk about what will change or be different (and incorporate feedback)
4. Get a social media presence!!!

If they do respond, their response will be blogged, chatted and tweeted about and will serve as a case study for social media engagement for years to come. No pressure.

I’m waiting with baited breath.

Sarah writes her own blog PRsarahevans.com and is the director of communications at Elgin Community College (ECC) in Elgin, Illinois. She also worked for Advocate Health Care, the largest health care system in Illinois, as the manager of communications and government relations at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital. She brings a comprehensive background in the knowledge of non-for-profit and health care management.

A concept in video advertising has been bubbling up amongst the professionals I’ve been listening to over the last six months, one that makes a lot of sense and is already in use by several successful podcasters, but one that is rarely described explicitly and definitely lacks a cute buzzword-y name, at least as far as I’ve seen.

Most advertising in video and audio media is treated separately from any other content, text or otherwise. Most blogs and news organizations that regularly (or irregularly) produce and feature video and audio content don’t monetize it at all. Those that do monetize it either rely on remnant advertising methods or sell by CPM, and are often discouraged when production costs outpace the sales returns for the content being created.

I’ve spoken here before many times about the value of sponsorship models for all forms of online content, and their inherent superiority over metrics-based advertising for publishers. The topic has come up a few times when we’ve discussed different ways to monetize Twitter, particularly in the context of making money from a personal brand, rather than trying to look at the content as monetizable inventory:

Folks like Louis Gray and Robert Scoble have been able to launch entire Web 2.0 niches just by describing a problem, and then subsequently promoting a company or set of developers that work to solve those issues. Those are just two names I’m intimately familiar with within the hundreds of Twitter users that have several thousand or more subscribers. Twitter should be striking deals with these users and splitting the cash with them.

And I spoke even more recently about the idea of sponsorship in the context of online video when I explored some of the hidden reasons behind Revision3’s recent cuts:

For a real world example, why is it, do you think, that Cisco signed on to sponsor the Mashable Conversations video podcast (one with zero subscribers at the time when they signed the deal) before we’d ever put out an episode?  Why do you think Seagate continues to sponsor Robert Scoble’s endeavors, despite the fact that he doesn’t have the distribution of larger blogs like us?  The answer is the same in both cases – those advertisers want to have their name associated with the brands they’re buying into.

When you compare the budgets spent on brand sponsorship to metrics based ads on the very same show, the value to the publisher is clear – sponsorship is the way to go, as it can swing the money dial upwards easily by between a factor of 10 and 100.

With a Difference Like That, Doesn’t Advertiser Value Suffer?

Advertiser value, in theory, should go up. The reality of sponsorship situations is that they’re chosen much more carefully, and with much more manual interference. A company simply isn’t going to drop what can easily be a six figure sum on a well known publisher’s brand without some human interaction taking place. Conversely, buys that take place on remnant video inventory or CPC text and image inventory can easily exceed that value, and most of the time it’s handled primarily by automated systems.

Perhaps in a coming age, these sponsorship transactions will also take place by sophisticated automated means (and when that day comes, a lot of folks in the sales and marketing business will be fearful of their jobs), but I rather doubt it.

These types of sponsorships are generally made because careful consideration has been made by both the savvy publisher and the savvy marketer to identify where the audience for the product or service and the content being monetized coincide closely.

For a real example of what I’m talking about, simply look no further than our daily sponsored feature at Mashable, the Sun Startup Review. The content and the sponsorship is strictly textual in nature, but the concept here is the same. Sun decided that a key target for their future business lay in the startup sector, and Mashable’s brand is inextricably tied to the startup business, so thus a sponsor-publisher relationship made sense.

Sun could have simply bid on a text ad on the side bar, or even purchased one of the more expensive graphic ads we sell, but they were looking to shape their image to our audience beyond what may or may not be glimpsed when a reader scrolls through our pages looking for content.

In terms of online video, these concepts are no different, it’s just that the added value of the sponsorship becomes much more stark and visible.

New Media Beats Heritage Media Moguls at Their Own Game

Although I’ve vocally disagreed with Brightcove’s media distribution strategies from time to time, their Vice President Adam Berrey very succinctly made this point about publishers with respect to how they work to monetize their video efforts at a recent roundtable discussion hosted by Beet.TV.

The point that he’s driving at there is that it’s the audience you’re selling, and not the content. This is true for any media organization, and it’s an important distinction for those who are trying to sell any New Media inventory to learn and learn well.

Put another way, New Media publishers hold in their grasp the holy grail that moguls of the olden days spent millions, if not billions, to acquire – the ability to sell against multiple media types. Congress won’t ever pass legislation to break up a media monopoly by an online website in an effort to prevent them from utilizing video, audio, images and text on their website. On the other hand, congressional hearings are routinely held whenever mergers and acquisitions take place that consolidate too much media in the hands of too few publishers.

Just In Case You Need a Refresher on the Value of Video

Case study after case study shows how video and audio are more valuable than simple text content. The old standby study I like to cite was published two years ago by Ken Rutkowski, and it documented the simply amazing response rates to online video advertisements.

It found that of those that watched a video advertisement online, 45% had some sort of measurable response from the ad, and 31% followed through on the advertisement enough to go to the company website. Of those that watched the advertisement, 16% ended up making a purchase, and separate 13% either signed up for a free trial or ordered a subscription.

Plainly, if under half watch the advertisement, and then 45% of those folks respond, you’ve got around a 25% viewer to response ratio, a not insignificant number. Likewise, of all the folks that will view a video, 12.9% will end up buying the product, requesting a free trial, or ordering a subscription.

At this point, evangelism for online video response rates is almost preaching to the choir, no matter who it is you’re talking to. The reasons behind it, particularly for the web savvy, are almost common sense.

• A video advertisement defeats most common forms of web ad-blindness.
• Standard video and audio CPM base rates for even remnant ads are far higher than that of text.
• Video and audio are more memorable and often easier venues for conveying complex ideas, and thus …
• … better at creating a lasting impression of advertiser brands, offers, products and services.

The formulas for CPMs and CPCs are great starting points, but shouldn’t be set in stone. When a publisher is looking to solidify the sponsorship relationship, they should treat all inventory (be it audio, video or text) as ala carte.  The key is, for both advertisers and those who sell ads, to wrap your head around the concept of what a video or audio ad is worth, what your brand and audience is worth, and how to convey that to those who want to partner with you to reach your audience.

The Army’s Web site for potential enlistees, goarmy.com, will feature a series of webcasts about soldiers deployed in Iraq.

By STUART ELLIOTT

FOR the last two years, the Army has presented itself to potential recruits as the way to become “Army strong.” Beginning on Tuesday, Veterans Day, the Army will seek to make its pitch stronger by making the campaign more relevant to the desired audience of Americans ages 17 to 24.

One new feature on a redesigned version of the Army Web site (goarmy.com) called “Straight From Iraq” states, “Now you can find out what it’s really like to be deployed in the Middle East from the men and women stationed there.”

“Soldiers are ready to take your questions,” says a section of the site devoted to a webcast series. The feature represents the first time that visitors can ask questions of soldiers deployed overseas as well as the first time the Iraq war has been referred to so directly and prominently on the Web site.

The goal is to provide those considering the Army — along with parents and others who influence their decisions — with “verifiable information about what being a soldier is really like, what combat is really like,” said Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, commanding general of the Army Accessions Command in Fort Monroe, Va., which is overseeing recruitment.

The changes in the “Army strong” campaign place more emphasis on the Internet, event marketing and other methods that connect with young Americans on a closer, more personal level.

To help pay for the new media features, cutbacks are being made in areas like the Army’s sponsorships of professional rodeos.

The changes include an additional theme for the campaign, “Strength like no other,” which will appear along with “Army strong”; a focus on the skills that recruits can learn in the Army, to make a stronger case about how serving can bring personal and career success later in life; and new information about becoming an officer.

“The campaign has been successful conveying the benefits of ‘Army strong,’ the physical, emotional and mental benefits,” said Ed Walters, chief marketing officer for the Army at the Pentagon.

“We wanted to more clearly articulate that,” he added, through efforts like sharing with civilians the video clips of “real soldiers’ stories.”

•

The “Army strong” campaign is produced by nine agencies, eight of them part of the McCann Worldgroup division of the Interpublic Group of Companies. The Army ad budget from 2006 through 2011 is estimated at $1.35 billion.

The Army has met its recruiting goals for the first two fiscal years during which the “Army strong” campaign has appeared. Critics of the military’s practices contend that bonuses being awarded to recruits as well as less stringent entry standards have also helped meet the goals.

“We love the ‘Army strong’ campaign because it resonates with youth,” General Freakley said, and it “says in a nutshell who our soldiers are, that it is a strength they get by serving.”

“This is a progression, an evolution,” he added, referring to the new phase of the campaign.

In addition to the new content on goarmy.com, there will be new TV commercials, meant to help drive traffic to the Web site. The first ones compare the Army to a company, a team and a school by showing young men and women in settings like an office building, a gym and a campus. The scenes shift into scenes of soldiers performing military tasks like marching and saluting the flag.

In the gym commercial, young athletes are seen working out, then stacking sandbags. “There is a team like no other team in the world,” says the narrator, the actor Gary Sinise, who took over the narration work for the campaign last year from the actor Josh Charles.

“When they raise their flag in victory, you will know what these men and women are fighting for,” Mr. Sinise says, “and you will feel fortunate to be counted among them.”

In the office commercial, young workers in business attire suddenly start climbing walls. “This company is filled with dreamers,” Mr. Sinise says, “but they also have courage, strength and honor, and when they leave this company it will be with a thousand opportunities and the respect of millions.”

The intent is “to show the Army in a way you haven’t thought about it,” said Craig Markus, executive creative director at McCann Erickson Worldwide in New York, one of the McCann Worldgroup agencies working on the campaign.

“Obviously, the buzzword right now is ‘relevance,’ ” he added, “and we’re trying to talk to people in a way that’s relevant to them at the moment.”

Coincidentally, it turns out the campaign was developed months before the start of the steep economic downturn. The growing unemployment rate could benefit the Army because young men and women may enlist rather than search fruitlessly for work.

“History will tell you that’s true,” Mr. Markus said, “but I’m not going to predict what may happen.”

The other McCann Worldgroup agencies working on the campaign are: Casanova Pendrill, for ads aimed at Hispanics; the IW Group, for ads aimed at Asian-Americans; Momentum, for event marketing and sponsorships; MRM Worldwide, for the Web site, digital marketing and direct marketing; NAS Recruitment, for medical recruiting; Universal McCann, for media planning and buying; and Weber Shandwick, for public relations.

Another agency, Carol H. Williams Advertising, is creating ads aimed at African-American recruits.

•

Other changes the Army is making include reworking the content of the Virtual Army Experience, a traveling interactive exhibit with games and other displays that is intended for an audience as young as 13. There have been complaints that the exhibit is inappropriate because it makes combat seem to be fun.

“If we show the Army fighting, people say it’s violent,” General Freakley said. “If we don’t, people say it’s not truthful.”

The new content for the exhibit will concentrate on the peaceful purposes the Army can serve, he added, like providing humanitarian aid.

The new elements of the “Army strong” campaign aimed at so-called influencers like parents are scheduled to start in January. Such ads have been part of the campaign since it began in 2006.

Remember Adonomics (formerly Appaholic), the fishy analytics directory website for Facebook applications that we uncovered was used to pimp a service (the UADA, dead and buried now) from the same people who backed them (Altura Ventures), by ranking them as the biggest Facebook app creator before they ever launched? Well, we sure do.

According to AllFacebook, Adonomics has now been acquired by Adknowledge, which has made acquisitions in this space before (social ad network Cubics in December 2007). We have a feeling this was a very small deal, given the fact that Google Trends shows zero traffic for Adonomics since last April. (Update: Quantcast shows different stats, with rapidly increasing traffic numbers over the course of the Summer and a sharp decline right after. Alexa shows stagnation from April until now).

Lee Lorenzen, who runs Altura Ventures and was interim CEO for The UDUA back in the good old days, is notorious for making wild claims about the valuation of Facebook apps, and dreaming of a big seed investment round from aspiring Facebook app developers. We have an e-mail in with him to see how much Adknowledge valued Adonomics for.

Adam Ostrow and SocialTimes’ Nick O’Neill were ahead of the curve on this one.

About a month ago, they spotted what looked to be an advertising platform at MySpace targeted primarily at musicians. It promised “options for targeting users based on a number of demographic and interest-related characteristics.” The self-service system Nick sleuthed into the public eye appears to be the same system that’s being announced today under the name “MyAds.”

Our original report looks to be largely correct, except that the advertising service is targeted towards not just musicians, but “filmmakers, musicians, politicians, authors, video bloggers, non-profit orgs, realtors, restauranters, comedians, radio stations, and doctors,” according to the press information they sent us this evening.

From our previous coverage:

As for the fee structure, MySpace explains: “There is no fee for your advertisement to appear on MySpace. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your profile to learn more about your offer. We will keep showing your ad on MySpace until your campaign has reached its expiration date, or you have reached your spending limit.” There is however a $25 minimum for campaigns.

We have a few new nuggets of info now the service is official. The most interesting bit is that the CPC rates start at $0.25 (with minimum campaign budgets of $25), which put it in the range of affordability for most people. As someone who’s run advertising campaigns on MySpace before to promote video blogs, I can say that it’s generally fertile marketing ground for that sort of thing.

And suddenly social networks focus on revenue: it’s about time. But how will it stack up against some of the other major CPC platforms out there?