MySpace is significantly growing their inside ad sales department, according to reports coming from Mediaweek. We'd like to say that we trust all the information we're relaying to you from their piece today is 100% reliable, but they report MySpace's total yearly revenue somewhere around $17 million, which is around half of what MySpace is reported to make in a month.

None the less, the story boasts high profile sources, like Michael Barrett, the chief revenue officer at Fox Interactive Media. If the chief revenue officer doesn't know how much the company makes, who would? According to Barrett, 40% of the social network's revenue comes from branded, CPM based advertising, up from less than 20% 18 months ago.

What's more, there are now 110 people on staff "dedicated to growing this revenue stream," a 100% increase in headcount for the entire company one year before.

Aside from questionable numbers, the impression Barrett gives off when he lists the various advertising projects the company is working on, is that they're not taking a "one-size-fits-all" approach to advertising on MySpace any longer. Gone are the days where there are simply banner and AdSense ads slapped on the site. They're looking to engage the user on all the fronts within the website's media arsenal: targeted ads on videos (in the form of news-crawl like tickers), profile meta-data targeted advertisements, and a "relevance engine" to make the determination between when it would and would not be appropriate to advertise on a specific online property (even though keywords might match up).

It will be interesting to see how it develops. MySpace's first year under FIM stewardship seemed to be a wait-and-see probationary period. Now that they're certain that it can make money without significant upgrades, you're going to see a leaner and more interesting MySpace emerge. Is Facebook prepared to meet an actual engaged competitor?

The next year will tell.

[via MediaWeek]