AdWeek reports on the launch of a new advertising service from the social networking site MySpace. Their new self-service banner ad system is called MyAds and the intention of this system is to attract thousands of organizations and small businesses to create their own display ads which will be matched to user interests on the site. These small ads will then be placed on pages through a bid auction system similar to Google AdWords.

This advertising mines personal profile data - "hyper-targeting" - and will make the 56 billion banners displayed by MySpace each month more valuable to advertisers through better targeting. Of course, this type of system also raises the issue of privacy again within these type of sites and how personal information is being used to 'monetise' the site.

MySpace has been testing this system with 3,000 advertisers and is now rolling the system out across the network with the hope of significantly extending the number of advertisers using the site, not just in the US but worldwide.

This new launch comes after an earlier report by AdWeek on the latest research from eMarketer, which says that social networks now rank among the most popular destinations on the Internet (particularly with the youth market) and marketers will continue to look for ways to reach consumers at those sites. The 2 leading networking sites - MySpace and Facebook - are expected to account for 72% of the total US social network ad spend in 2008. Spending at all other online social network sites (including general social, niche and marketer-created networks) is expected to reach $370 million this year.