With the excitement of Web 2.0, there are many people who debate whether or not money can be made on such social sites. Sure, there are Google AdSense, and Amazon ads, but can people really make money? Although there are many little ads where people claim making large sums of money, but are there any case studies? Yes, there are. Today, let us examine how some large companies made their money on MySpace.

The reports on making money on MySpace are mixed. Those companies that report successful advertising campaigns conducted on MySpace report good results. Let us reverse engineer what they did and how it worked.

For our first example, let us examine Electronic Arts. Electronic Arts (EA Games) conducted a marketing campaign on MySpace for one of its products. The company targeted an audience of 1.8 million people at a cost of $1.19 per user. What EA did not expect was that word of mouth from their advertising campaign spread through the MySpace community. Due to favorable remarks on friends profiles, 4.5 million more people expressed an intention to purchase EA products, bringing the advertising cost down to 34 cents per user. This kind of marketing is referred to as the “momentum effect”.

The EA campaign showed that word of mouth actually promoted their product more than their ads did. So one of the things that drives Web 2.0 promotions is the ripple effect of the word of mouth between members of the sites.

Another similar effect happened with Adidas. The company spent $1.87 per user to reach 1.2 million people. By word of mouth, the reach of their campaign achieved 4.5 million people expressing the intent to purchase their product. This is another clear example of the momentum effect. Both companies had to create a persona for their product and create a product that they could share with other users. This new marketing process has been termed by some as “friending”. This use of friends and contacts to further a sales network has a long history of effectiveness as shown by multi-level marketers. The results of these campaigns were more cost effective than television in terms of influencing purchasing behavior, where for every $100,000 a company may reach 75,000 favorable impressions. For the same amount of money, they attained over a million favorable impressions for the $100,000 spent in advertising.

Another company that took a different approach was Conde Nast. Conde Nast publishing conducted a campaign in January 2007 for its Brides.com product. The company decided to advertise on MySpace due to the boast of the site have nearly 9 million women ages 21-34, which is the target market for Brides.com along with having a community oriented environment. A profile page was constructed consisting of video samples, and photo samples of material on their site (Brides.com) along with a honeymoon giveaway sweepstakes promoted. In addition to the site, there were banner ads, the offering of a wedding countdown widget, and quizzes designed to help the taker decide what style of bridal style they had. Their MySpace campaign ended up costing $100,000.

These case studies show that money can be made on Web 2.0. The amount of money exceeds that generated by AdSense and Amazon. Setting up profitable campaigns requires knowledge and experience in dealing with Web 2.0. Let Ask Web 2.0 help you with your campaign.