• The Wall Street Journal, Friday, April 4, 2008 11 AM

On the same day that MySpace announced a landmark music deal with several major record labels, Fox Interactive Media, the social network's parent, unveiled a "significant" restructuring. FIM will spin off its advertising technology business, and chief revenue officer Michael Barrett will leave the company. The move could be the result of FIM missing fiscal-year revenue projections by more than 10 percent, or approximately $100 million, although a company spokeswoman claimed the News Corp. unit's revenues would be "close to the target" of $1 billion.

Most of the company's revenues come from the sale of display advertising and sponsorships. Marketers complain that their ad campaigns have been ineffective, while some choose not to advertise on user-generated content.

The new plan is to make the Fox Interactive Media Audience Network, which includes News Corp. sites like IGN, Photobucket and MySpace, its own standalone company. The new company would be able to deploy its ad targeting technology to a wider network of publishers outside of the News Corp. domain. The targeting technology draws from the rich social data collected by MySpace and other sites to target ads based on users interests.

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