businesses that target younger people.. between 16-22 would be forced to have a myspace account and maybe even advertize via google adwords.. blah blah blah sorry to go on and on

I really hate the layout of myspace

Thanks for confirming this, you are not alone in this. I know it looks like ugly 90s design. But the point is people can add their avatars easily and link like crazy. It is like the poor men Word Press. People use myspace because it is easy to add copy, media and so on BUT they dont care abou the design but that it works to get visitors. Each account has many myspace buddies. They spread the word easily to their peers.

Have you check Facebook yet? That is growing like seeds as well. If millions use it to spread the word, online advertisers know for sure millions of visitors are to be found there. This makes Google ads and any other ads boom like never before. These ads suffer from click fraud a lot but you cannot stop all SPAM either. Social networking sites offer new possibilities for advertisers as never before. In the past, advertisors used the well visited giant portals but now all eyes are on social networking sites.

I don’t think its good that these sites are dominating the market share

Dont forget that Google now owns a large share of myspace and Yahoo could probably acquire Facebook as well if the talks turn into a deal. The market share of Google and Yahoo, Both are one of the largest search engines on the planet!

On a normal website , you may not know as an advertiser what audience you’re dealing with. With a social networking site you have more power to deliver relevant ads to users as you can access people’s hobbies/tastes/personalities etc and serve up a powerful ad campaign.

The idea of social networking sites is to gain a lot of subscribers no matter how ugly designed the applications are. It is viral and booming inmensely. Very interesting for advertisers that they can estimate the number of visitors, which was really hard before when doing only TV ads or radio ads for that matter. You are right though, information about the visitors is also vital for any ad campaign.

With click ads you gain more exposure and become more visible on search engine results. You also have the use of referrals and so on; it is all about connecting the goods and services with the customers.