Thursday, June 3, 2010
MySpace, Ad.ly Link On In-Stream Advertising
Los Angeles-based MySpace and startup Ad.ly, also based in LA, said today that they have linked in an in-stream advertising deal. According to MySpace, it will use Ad.ly to enable content creators to reach fans in the MySpace stream. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal comes shortly after Twitter said it would not be allowing other companies to automatically insert ads into its service, which looked to most direclty impact Ad.ly. MySpace said that beginning today, publishers on the site can create a profile and control what messages they would like to insert into their activity stream. Ad.ly helps celebrities, musicians, and other social influencers monetize their Twitter and other activity streams with advertising; the firm is backed by GRP Partners, Greycroft Partners, and LowerMyBills' Matt Coffin.
The link with MySpace pulls Ad.ly squarely into a multi-way intersection of who's who in Southern California's blog and technology world. The deal was announced by Sean Pervical, Director Content Socialization for MySpace, who also runs LA technology blog Lalawag; Ad.ly is an investment of GRP's Mark Suster, who hosts This Week in Venture Capital along with Mahalo's Jason Calacanis. Suster also runs Launchpad LA. Finally, MySpace is co-run nowadays by Mike Jones, who founded Userplane and is an active angel investor in the area, and is an advisor for Launchpad LA.