Mobile is big for MySpace, and getting huge—around 15 percent of visitors to MySpace are via its mobile site, which represents a 400 percent increase from a year ago, and MySpace expects half its traffic to come from mobiles in a few years time. The problem is getting some revenue from that traffic. “We have not yet monetised our video streams…We are in a beta phase with it but we are looking to get into that this calendar year. The barrier that we perceive on a mobile device is you’re really looking for snack-sized information, and if you have that and user-generated content, what is the end-users going to think about you putting ads in there?” MySpace Mobile chief John Faith told C21 Media.

The question appears to be how to put a 10-second ad in front of a 10-second video clip without annoying people. I won’t get into the business model since MySpace has decided free and ad-supported is the way to go, but I will question why they think ad-supported involves putting an ad in front of every video clip. They’re doing this via an application, I’m sure it would be simple to keep track of how much video someone has watched and chuck in an ad after 5 minutes. It doesn’t matter if they’re watching a bunch of 10-second clips or a single 5 minute clip, and it doesn’t matter if they watch it all at once or over a few months—just keep track and insert the ad at the appropriate time.