Any bands or solo artists out there thinking about trying Myspace's new "Myspace Ads" advertising campaign? Think again.

What Myspace is doing, in my opinion, is nothing short of a scam. Because, in the end, for most of us, what they're promoting is nothing close to what you'll get.

Now that Myspace is owned by News Corp., it's no surprise they're trying to get into the lucrative world of Search Marketing. But they're not satisfied with reeling in big movie companies like Miramax or record labels like Warner Bros. who have millions to spend like it's water.

Myspace apparently now wants to bleed the indie artist out of his/her weekly paycheck with the promise that their band will appear on thousands of their users' home pages, just like all the movie/music ads you see every day. In theory, this might be true, but you will need a marketing budget like Miramax to accomplish it. Here's why:

What they're attempting to do with "Myspace Ads" is convince up and coming bands, many of whom can barely pay the monthly electric bill in the rehearsal space, that this can be accomplished for as low twenty-five dollars. Absolutely not true. If you know anything about Search Marketing, which is what this is, you'd know there's no way in Havana that twenty-five dollars will get you anywhere on Myspace Ads. Yet, the folks at Myspace seem totally comfortable in luring folks in with that tag line. They think that by telling you you can control the precise amount you want to spend per day, they're saving you from any 'unanticipated costs.' How nice of them. While there might not be any "unanticipated costs," there will definitely be an unanticipated coronary when you figure out exactly how much you need to spend per day to achieve any sort of meaningful result.

So, forgetting all that, you do what they say, sign up, and design an online banner ad for your music. Now Myspace says they will run it on any number of specific demographic groups you select, i.e. book clubs, horror movie buffs, etc. The reason what they're doing is a scam is this:

Myspace Ads, like Google or Yahoo, is a "Pay Per Click" business. What this means is although you won't be charged anything unless someone actually CLICKS on your banner, in order to get your banner seen by any decent amount of viewers to get those clicks, you have to bid TOP DOLLAR for EACH CLICK.

To make matters worse, the MINIMUM bid allowed by Myspace, on any campaign, is TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. A quarter may not sound like a lot of money, but when you consider Google and Yahoo both allow you to bid for views for as low as a nickel, you can see the difference.

The site proudly says you can bid as little as twenty-five dollars for your campaign or as much as twenty-five grand. I'm sure there are a lot of bands out there who are running to spend twenty-five thousand dollars to promote their music on Myspace, but for now, let's go somewhere nowhere near the middle of those two guidelines:

For example, the average bid to get decent views from the "Comedy Movies" group is about forty cents PER CLICK.

So, let's say your band is loaded and you set $20.00/day for your preset limit. Why not, right? If there's four of you and each kicks in five bucks a day, that's only $35.00/week and $140.00/month, per member. Still hefty but not outrageous if it means you'll sell a bunch of CD's.

At twenty bucks per day, you would receive only about FIFTY CLICKS -not SALES or ACTIONS!

Now, stay with me here; anyone who knows anything about online marketing knows that a GREAT conversion rate for actions is about one-tenth of one percent. So, if one percent of fifty is .5, then a tenth of that would be .05% - less than 1 SINGLE, ACTION.

So, for that $20.00/day Myspace Ad budget, your band would need about four days, or EIGHTY DOLLARS, to sell ONE CD. And, at the end of one month, you will have put six hundred dollars into Rupert Murdoch's pocket and sold approximately 7 CD's. Which, when you subtract all costs of production, artwork, shipping, etc., will have cost you six hundred bucks to make about forty. (Sounds like GM's business plan).

Also, remember, this is taking into account all fans buy your full-length album and not the iTunes .99 special. Your band will make next to nothing if the majority of the sales are for singles.

Hopefully, most of you out there will realize this for yourselves. But given the fact that most musicians can barely decide which pair of pants to wear, I figured I'd try and help.

I, myself, was almost suckered into this. I went as far as to create a banner, selected which groups I wanted to target, and even put my credit card info in. But then I did the math for forty cents a click, freaked out, and erased all the info.

Having said all that, artists interested in the concept of search marketing might want to check out a very promising new site called "Grooveshark" which allows bands to be listed next to the artists they feel they sound like for pennies on the dollar. Myspace should have definitely taken into consideration their user base before setting twenty-five cent minimums and exorbitant per click bids when they thought this thing up. But then again, its just Myspace.



part two tomorrow.