Every man for himself

MySpace's soon-to-launch casual gaming section has stirred the interest of some ad industry analysts, who see the feature as a golden cow in-the-make for advertisers.

Regardless of how targeted run-of-site ads are on social networks, Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer tells ClickZ they're "among the worst performers."

The performance of website ads are usually determined by the quality of CPM, lead generation and conversions.

But ads on casual games are proven to work better than average. Marketers cater to a captive audience, and there is less noise to compete with overall.

MySpace also announced the site would include multiplayer games, adding a level of real-time engagement to the experience. For just this type of atmosphere, Microsoft and EA developed a dynamic in-game ad platform in July.