Cartier Tries to Make Friends on Myspace

It seems like an unlikely pairing: one is a legendary French jeweler best known for high-priced luxury watches, while the other is a young American internet company renowned for garish web pages and legion of teenage fans.

Despite their apparent differences, however, Cartier - the world's biggest seller of luxury jewelery - has joined up with the social networking website MySpace for its latest advertising wheeze.

Cartier is plugging its wares through a dedicated page on the website, aimed at bringing its prestigious style to new audiences. Visitors to the page - myspace.com/lovebycartier - can view romantic videos, download exclusive songs or leave messages.

The page counts a number of high-profile musicians among its "friends", including Sting and Lou Reed, the former Velvet Underground singer who has a long-running association with Cartier.

In general, luxury brands have remained skeptical about advertising on the internet, choosing instead to stick to traditional outlets such as glossy magazines.

The parent company of another French giant, the fashion company Louis Vuitton, is engaged in a legal battle with online marketplace eBay over the fact that the internet company allows sales of its branded goods, despite not being an authorized outlet.

In recent years, internet advertising has increased rapidly. By the end of this year Google is expected to make more than £1.7bn through advertising in Britain alone, making it more valuable to advertisers than the entire national newspaper industry and ITV1.

MySpace's advertising executives say that about a quarter of all traffic to the site comes from households with annual incomes in excess of £50,000. "There's a potential market for luxury advertisers."