We have all heard probably too much about the social networking sites. But they truly do offer a high concentration of the college-aged audience, and provide a unique, less "corporate" way of talking to their audience(s).
Facebook and My Space are standouts in this category in terms of aggregating the young segment and engaging them in ways that are unique to these types of sites. They provide them with a community to in which to interact with each other and learn and share from their peers. In this way, they provide value to their users, thus gaining their trust and loyalty. And by being one of the group members, your brand can gain credibility amongst this audience in a more effective way.
The unique things these sites can offer are marketer-branded pages that allow the marketer to create its own presence within these communities, acting as a group member.
Marketers can have anything and everything on their pages including product info, listing of events, polls/quizzes, places to share photos and stories, redemption of certificates for product and much, much more.
Then, the social site will reach out to the mass audience to attract the users to your page. This can be through banners, text links, emails, et cetera. And they are able to target them on a very fine level to ensure you reach the users you are most interested in.
For instance, Facebook will allow you to target only users that come from a specific campus or are a certain age/gender. You can be sure their targeting is accurate since the users all register, must verify their school and have an active .edu email address.
Some samples of group pages:
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Sample ad units:
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