New Moon wolf at MySpace's door

A giant wolf and a slew of brooding, pale, chiseled-ab-boasting teenagers are set to take over MySpace.

The News Corp.-owned social networking site is rolling out a new, highly intrusive home-page takeover ad for The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the much anticipated sequel to the hit vampire movie, which opens today.

The new ad treatment is a first for MySpace, which regularly carries movie advertisers on its home page. In this case, an overlay of a wolf (one of the characters in the sequel is a werewolf) rules the site’s home page.

A half dozen of the movie’s other characters will appear prominently on every corner of the page, providing New Moon with the most overt ad treatment the site has executed to date.

Users will also be encouraged to buy tickets to the movie -- for which they’ll be rewarded with a free soundtrack remix via Apple’s iTunes. Mega ad packages like New Moon’s opening-day home-page invasion likely represents the future of MySpace, which is attempting to reinvent itself as an entertainment-centric social platform.

The movie franchise's presence on the site kicked off last June when MySpace debuted the first New Moon trailer, which generated 4.2 million online views in 24 hours and 7.8 million views over a course of a week. And this past Monday, the site streamed live the movie’s Hollywood red carpet premiere, which attracted roughly 2 million unique viewers.

Also, MySpace Music is showcasing a featured playlist from Alexandra Patsavas, the music supervisor behind the New Moon soundtrack. And leading up to the premiere the movie’s cast members have been regularly updating their MySpace statuses.

Mike Shields Adweek