For example…Myspace and many other sites have a self-disclosed income, gender, and age criterion when you sign up. If that’s where they are getting their data then that’s probably what it says – those who sign up are such-and-such a demographic and such-and-such age etc.

The problem is that it isn’t verifiable data from any other source… So, like many things on the internet this may not be all that it seems. S0o while I might identify and show up in the database as a 45 year old Mom who makes over $100,000 a year… in reality I am an underpaid teenager working minimum wage.

Self-disclosure is the bane of social statisticians everywhere…because well, people lie and they especially lie about basic facts. Some fascinating studies of online dating show that this income is, in fact, one of the “big three” people lie about on dating sites (the others being “marital status” and “age”).

So it surprises me that marketing folks would jump so quickly into a pool based on data that may or may not be all that accurate.

I will say that MySpace has HUGE reach. So, if only 19% of MySpace visitors make over $100k per year, that’s still roughly 14 million people!

It will be interesting to see how the campaign works for them…