Los Angeles - News Corp.'s MySpace online social network has begun using information its 110 million active members post to their online profiles to target them for ads, the company said yesterday.

MySpace's "interest-based targeting" system uses algorithms to comb MySpace profiles and members' blogs, and place users in groups according to their primary interest; categories include sports, fashion, finance, video games, cars and health.

Each group, which contains more than 3 million members, can then be further divided into hundreds of subcategories.

"We are blessed with a phenomenal amount of information about the likes, dislikes and life's passions of our users," Peter Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media, told a Merrill Lynch investor conference on Tuesday.

"We have an opportunity to provide advertisers with a completely new paradigm."

The company told The New York Times its new targeting system has improved the likelihood that members will click on an ad by 80% on average.

While Fox is currently handling interest-based ad sales manually, the company plans to launch a Web-based automated system in November.

Related Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/technology/18myspace.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070918/ap_on_hi_te/myspace_advertising_2