Media6Degrees is the latest company to try to target ads for major brands using the "social graph" of your friend relationships on social networks and other sites. The New York company is in private beta judging by the lack of information on its site about the product itself. The company says it has "patent-pending algorithms and methods" that use demographic and "psychographic" data to target online ads for each individual advertiser.
So far, though, the beta says it is getting much higher response rates from audiences versus competitors. Those competitors, as far as I can tell, would include MySpace's hyper-targeted ads, whatever Facebook is working on that it hasn't disclosed too much about, and a range of other social networks and ad startup efforts. Among the startups, there's Social Media, Lookery and others on Facebook alone. More generally, the majority of ad networks in the online ad industry at large seem to say they can target based on demographic factors, although not the "social graph."
While I'm checking in to find out more, here's a press release's description:
Media6° audiences, sharing powerful demographic and psychographic traits, have been proven to respond to advertising messages at rates dramatically higher than other targeting alternatives. The firm’s offering has appeal for brand marketers seeking large audiences displaying the highest levels of response, engagement, word of mouth and collective behavior.
The company is careful about the ad-targeting issue, saying that it doesn't use personal data. Instead, it says it relies on the "underlying data used by Media6° in the execution of its strategy has long been present in ad serving logs and has always been used by advertisers to monitor and audit their campaigns." Cookies?
It has also just raised $9 million from U.S. Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Coriolis Ventures (we covered the Coriolis funding in April) and angel investors, and boasts a long list of advisers from media and technology. The startup hired Joe Doran away from his job as general manager at Microsoft Ad Center in April, to become chief executive. At Microsoft, Doran had been responsible for strategy, product and mergers and acquisitions for all of Microsoft's ad-related businesses.