Los Angeles - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace on Monday announced that it has completed the first phase of its new "HyperTargeting" ad program, which combs data on its users' profiles in order to serve more relevant ads, and signed up over 50 advertisers, including Taco Bell, Toyota, Sony and Microsoft.

"We far exceeded our initial goals in increasing campaign performance for our clients -- in some cases tripling the performance over comparable campaigns," said Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer for Fox Interactive Media.

In the second phase, MySpace will expand the ten enthusiast categories it created, based on its users' interests, further into more than 100 subcategories.

For example, "movie fans" will be expanded to allow advertisers to more specifically target fans of comedies or horror films.

MySpace said the HyperTargeting service will also be coming to international MySpace sites in early 2008.

Separately, the company announced plans to launch a beta version of a self-service advertising platform early next year, which will allow small business owners, bands, politicians and others to create and purchase ads on MySpace.

SelfServe by MySpace will also give smaller advertisers access to HyperTargeting data for their campaigns.

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http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9810771-36.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/technology/05myspace.html