The most interesting online ad news of the year

. . . could be the new My Space targeted ad platform reported on by CNET and Tech Crunch.

Looks like this is the fruit of the earlier Fox Interactive Media acquisition of Strategic Data Corp. earlier this year.

This has the potential to be much more interesting than the much heralded deals involving aQuantive, Doubleclick, Right Media, etc., because this could represent the most advanced instance of behavioral targeting into social media networks.

If this advancement allows real action-based (i.e., not just interest based) targeting (what Lotame and Andy Monfried call "verb targeting"), maybe real value can finally be brought to the consumer and advertiser. That's the potential, at least, and if it works I think represents the biggest breakthrough for online advertising since AdSense.

And while I had heard that there was still much too much manual categorization going on inside MySpace as part of this - if the end result is an easy, efficient product for advertisers, it will do well.