It’s still just in test mode, and only open to a handful of advertisers. But those who can use it can now buy ads directly via Twitter, using a credit card and a Web browser, without ever having to talk to a human being. Right now buyers can only purchase some of Twitter’s ad products — specifically “promoted accounts” and “promoted tweets” — but Twitter says that will expand over time, as it rolls out self-serve to more buyers.

This is a step that Twitter has been talking about for a long time — so long that it has had to argue with reporters who swear they saw one nearly a year ago — so it’s not earth-shaking stuff. Yesterday, for instance, when Twitter ad sales head Adam Bain disclosed it onstage during an interview at Business Insider’s Ignition conference, it didn’t seem to register.

Still, it’s a significant milestone, because if Twitter is ever going to grow into that $8 billion valuation and beyond, it’s going to have to be able to handle a huge volume of ad transactions — just like Google and Facebook. And that can only happen if small and medium-sized buyers can do it on their own.

At the other end of the spectrum, though, Bain and company are now pre-selling big dollar ad campaigns, to big brands, that will run in 2012. That kind of pre-sale is also the mark of a grown-up ad business, and while Twitter is a long way from getting there, it’s a start.

Here’s Twitter PR rep Matt Graves’s comments on self-serve, via email:

Last month, Twitter began testing self-service advertising with a handful of existing advertisers. These advertisers can now set up and run their own Promoted Products campaigns and pay via a credit card.

This is an important step in continuing to grow Twitter’s business. Our Promoted Products can help small and medium-sized businesses build their audience on Twitter and better engage with the people they want to reach.

As with all of our advertising efforts, we’re starting small, testing carefully and making improvements as we learn what works. We will slowly roll this capability out to more advertisers in the coming weeks and months.

[Shutterstock/Master3D]

You probably know this, but ESPN star Bill Simmons — the guy they built an entire site for — is a big Twitter user. He has some free advice today about things he’d like changed/added. I concur! Let’s make it happen, ok? Thanks.

Via Grantland:

I can’t believe Twitter hasn’t added one of the following two wrinkles …

a. Adding a checklist to your follower list so you could follow however many people you want, but “check” the ones you want to actually show up in your feed. This would prevent wounded feelings (if you’re not following a friend who’s secretly bitter that you’re not following them, which means either they tweet too much or their tweets suck) and clogged Twitter feeds (if you have a couple of friends who post 40 to 50 times a day and clog your feed up, only you can’t unfollow them because they’re your friends).

b. Adding a button so you can make your follower list private. Do you realize how many more porn stars, strippers and hoochie mamas would be followed by athletes and rappers if nobody could see whom they were following? (Well, not you, Amar’e Stoudemire, you obviously don’t care. I’m talking about everyone else.) Do you realize how much more DM-inspired casual sex could be going down? You’re cheating the condom industry, child alimony lawyers and sports blogs, Twitter. Get your act together.

When the selling of Myspace winds down in the next week or so, it’ll probably attract a spate of comments about what a failure the whole social networking enterprise turned out to be.

And — especially when you recall what a Web phenom the social networking site was before it got blown out of the water by Facebook — it was.

That is, unless you think of the mob of former execs who have worked at the company over time, many of whom have moved on to some more golden opportunities after leaving the News Corp.-owned property.

That includes, most recently and notably, former sales head Michael Barrett, who is about to score big as CEO of AdMeld, which is reportedly in the process of selling to Google for $400 million.

Also a big winner: Former Myspace CEO Owen Van Natta, who was fired from that job in one of its many putsches and who quickly rebounded to a top job at online gaming powerhouse Zynga.

So, while it is one of the more overused memes of Silicon Valley, the “mafia” analogy — which has been applied to fertile entrepreneurial breeding grounds such as PayPal, before its acquisition by eBay — is useful when thinking about Myspace.

It is also a good thing to keep in mind about any tech company that goes off the rails: There might still be a silver lining, even if the start-up never sees the light of day again.

As proof, herein is a list I created after pinging a bunch of former Myspace folks:

Jason Oberfest: Former SVP of business development. Now, VP Ngmoco, which was sold to Japanese gaming giant DeNA for $400 million last year.

Dmitry Shapiro: Former CTO, Myspace Music. Now, at Facebook competitor Altly.

Adam Bain: While at Fox Interactive Media, he ran the ad platform for Myspace. Now, head of sales at Twitter.

Jeff Berman: Former president of sales and marketing. Now, GM of the NFL’s digital media unit.

Jason Hirschhorn: Former co-president and chief product officer. Now, on MGM board, angel investor, and there are rumors of him working on a curation start-up.

Amit Kapur: Former COO. Now, CEO, Gravity, an information filtering service start-up.

Chris DeWolfe: Co-founder and former CEO. Now, CEO, MindJolt, an online gaming roll-up.

Ross Levinsohn: Former president of FIM, he was integral to buying Myspace. Now, EVP of Americas unit, Yahoo.

Mike Lang: Former News Corp. strategy exec also involved in Myspace purchase. Now, CEO, Miramax.

Aber Whitcomb: Former CTO. Now CTO, MindJolt.

Jim Heckman: Former chief strategy officer of FIM. Now, CEO of 5to1, recently sold to Yahoo for $25 million.

Dani Dudeck: Former communications head. Now, PR head at Zynga.

Travis Katz: SVP of international. Now, CEO of Gogobot, a social travel start-up.

Richard Rosenblatt: Former CEO of Intermix Media and Chairman of Myspace, he sold it to News Corp. Now, CEO of Demand Media.

Angela Courtin: Former SVP of marketing. Now, EVP at Aegis Media.

These folks should be on the call list of whoever ends up buying Myspace. Last week, I wrote that an investor group, including Activision head Bobby Kotick, is now in the lead for the deal.

As an update, according to sources, Kotick has gotten clearance from Activision’s major shareholder Vivendi to do the Myspace transaction as a passive personal investment.

But the relationship between the two, which Twitter has been actively trying to promote in the last nine months or so, is a funky one: Sometimes Twitter gets excited about TV shows that lots of people don’t care about. And sometimes TV’s most popular shows aren’t nearly as popular on the social messaging service.

You can see this illustrated quite effectively via data from SocialGuide, a start-up that tracks who’s saying what on the Web about live TV. SocialGuide wants to track TV commentary on all of the social media platforms, but right now it has the best bead on Twitter, because it has access to the service’s data “firehose.”

So while the chart below, which looks at TV shows that aired during the last week of May “sweeps,” technically encompasses more than Twitter data — there’s some Facebook commentary included there, for instance — it’s best to look at it as a Twitter proxy for now:

Notice that some of the most popular shows on TV are also a big deal on Twitter: American Idol, Glee, and some of the NBA playoff games map very closely on the two rankings.

But in other cases, there’s a big disparity.

For instance, there’s a slew of reality shows — “Mob Wives,” “America’s Best Dance Crew,” “Khloe & Lamar,” etc., that don’t crack the Nielsen top 100 for the week, but all place very highly on SocialGuide’s chart. Meanwhile, some of TV’s most popular shows, like “NCIS” and “Modern Family,” show up much further down SocialGuide’s rankings.

(If you’re interested in methodology, here’s a brief version: SocialGuide is only tracking commentary made while the shows are airing. But it’s attempting to track both explicit “check-ins” — either made using Twitter hashtags or via services like GetGlue — and implicit ones, when users refer to the show by name, etc.)

So what does that tell us? Hard to say. It’s tempting to make demographic links on some of these shows — for instance, surveys show that Twitter has a disproportionately large African-American user base, and perhaps that skews the ratings for shows like “Love & HipHop.”

But the data is pretty scattered, so I’d be wary of that: Anyone want to suggest why “Extreme Couponing” does well on Twitter? Also, is “Extreme Couponing” what I think it is?

In any case, the dream scenario for Twitter’s sales and marketing team (hi, Adam!) would be data that shows increasing Twitter popularity reflected in a show’s ratings. SocialGuide is just starting to publish this data, so it will be worth watching in the months to come.

But it’s important to note that there are other benefits to owning your own photo-sharing service. For instance, Twitter could use its new service to run ads, just like many other photo-sharing services.

Here’s a nice reminder of how that works: A photo of Sunday’s barely-attended Brewers-Marlins game, posted by Sara Livingston, then retweeted yesterday afternoon by MSNBC’s Darren Rovell. It has since been viewed more than 27,000 times.

Right now those views are generating dollars for Twitpic, which is running two ad units on the page, sold by middlemen like Google, Federated Media and VideoEgg. But there’s no reason Twitter couldn’t be running its own ads against that photo and keeping all of the revenue for itself.

Twitter ads on Twitter photos won’t be a magic revenue bullet for the company. And Twitter hasn’t said anything publicly about its ad plans for the service, anyway–my hunch is that if they do runs ads there, they’ll wait a while to do so. (Note that Facebook is only adding a light dusting of ads next to photos its users share, and Facebook is the Web’s biggest photo-sharing service).

Photo ads would be a nice option for Twitter’s sales team, though. Particularly because they don’t require the company to create an entirely new kind of advertising, like they’re trying to do with their “Promoted” suite of products.

Ad buyers are still trying to get their heads around ads like “Promoted Tweets” because they’re not sure what value they’re getting for their money, what kind of users are seeing them, and whether they can buy enough volume to make the thing worthwhile.

But ads on Web pages, next to photos people like to look at? That’s an easy sell. Doesn’t easy sound nice, Adam Bain?

An organization called Palindrome Advisors thinks so, and it launched a program Wednesday that aims to match executives in technology and other industries with nonprofits that need their help.

“In technology terms, think of Palindrome as a ‘match.com’ for industry leaders and the boards of nonprofits,” the group’s founder, Zaw Thet, told Digits in an email.

Palindrome has 100 executives signed up already–including Twitter’s president of global revenue, Adam Bain; Apple’s director of iPhone apps, Dag Kittlaus; and Ellen Siminoff, a founding executive and former senior vice president at Yahoo. The list of advisers is mostly from the tech world, but there are some outliers, including those in government, the energy business and even nightclubs.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Which means a Twitter user in, say, the U.K. may now see a different ad than one in the U.S.

If this strikes you as a common-sense must-have feature for any Web ad business–let alone one with Google-sized ambitions–you’re right. Which shows just how embryonic Twitter’s ad product is today, nearly a year after launch.

The positive spin here is that these moves show how much upside Twitter sales boss Adam Bain has in front of him–if the product is this crude now, it has nowhere to go but up. The flip side is that the product is still very crude.

The details: Twitter is now letting some beta testers target Promoted Tweets–the ad units that are actually Twitter messages–by country. Within the U.S., buyers can narrow their targeting down to the city level. And it is also letting testers target Promoted Accounts–its pay-per-follower feature–by country.

Here’s Twitter’s comment:

Since we first launched Promoted Tweets last April, we have said that enabling marketers to geo-target advertising on Twitter was a key next step in our ad platform’s continued evolution… We continuously launch features to enhance the advertising experience on Twitter. As with all of our advertising efforts, we are watching this test closely and will use feedback from advertisers and Twitter users to fine-tune and iterate on the feature.

[Image credit: Chokola]

Steele is a longtime marketing exec with previous stints at the video ad start-up Tremor Media and Coca-Cola. She comes to Twitter at a time when the company is finally focusing on turning its service into a business. Twitter is expected to have about $100 million in revenue in 2011. It was valued at $3.7 billion in its most recent funding round, and well above that in off-and-on acquisition talks with Facebook and Google.

Steele’s Twitter account is here. Appropriately, we first learned of the news on Twitter, from Advertising Age editor Michael Learmonth. A spokesperson for Twitter confirmed the hire this afternoon.

Because Stern has spent the afternoon delivering a scene-by-scene, Tweet-by-Tweet, DVD-style commentary while the movie has been playing on Time Warner’s HBO. It’s an incredibly simple idea, and a surprisingly compelling one: I gave in about 30 minutes ago and have had a hard time doing anything else since.

And while the movie will have ended by the time you read this, my hunch is you’ll be hearing about it for some time.

That’s because the idea of using Twitter to augment TV–particularly live TV–is something that Twitter’s executives have been actively promoting for some time now. Both because people are already doing it on their own, and because they think it will help them capture some of the huge TV ad marketplace, which still dwarves online.

“It’s taken the DVR out of the equation again,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said last month. “People feel like they have to watch the show, while it’s going on.”

And Twitter ad sales boss Adam Bain used today’s (spontaneous?) Stern seminar to expand on that message, and  hand out instructions to the TV business.

And I think he’s sort of right. I’m very happy to Twitter away, and read responses, during a certain kind of TV show. Such as a live event like the Oscars–one that I sort of care about, but not so much that I can’t look away for a few minutes.

But I’ve got no interest in twittering during “Justified,” because I really, really like that show. And there aren’t many celebrities whose tweets can get me to watch a show I don’t like.

Still, as I type this, I’m half-watching the last few minutes of a 14-year-old movie I haven’t thought about for a long time. So maybe the Twitter folks are on to something….

Last week, BoomTown interviewed Adam Bain, the longtime online advertising guy from News Corp.’s Fox Audience Network who now has the lofty title of president of global revenue at Twitter.

During the onstage chitchat at TWTRCON SF 10, the man in charge of figuring out a lucrative advertising business for the popular San Francisco-based microblogging service pulled out a bullhorn to make a point.

Also to “get in a word edgewise” with me!

I would say I was offended, but it was kind of a genius Sue Sylvester move.

Let’s hope he can come up with some more of those for Twitter!

I also liked his line about online advertising going from “‘Mad Men’ to math men.”

The interview we had was a lively one, as I wrote:

“At one point I asked Bain if he would tell me Twitter’s revenues, if he ‘did not mind,’ and he answered, ‘I do mind. I’m all about managing expectations.’ Which is to say, they are probably less-than-impressive still.”

Here is the bullhorn part of the interview, for those who might enjoy seeing me shut down–even if only for a moment, since I quickly got ahold of the very loud speaker myself.

Enjoy:

There is no question Adam Bain is a charmer, as you will be see from the video below.

He has to be, of course, as a longtime online advertising guy running News Corp.’s Fox Audience Network and now as president of global revenue at Twitter.

It’s a big splashy job for Bain, who also has some substantive geek credentials, unlike most sales people. But it is also a really tough one being the point man behind figuring out and building a viable and lucrative advertising business for the popular San Francisco-based microblogging service.

Is there gold in them thar Tweets? We’ll see, and Bain has to show us the money–and fast.

In fact, that was the title of an interview I did with Bain yesterday at TWTRCON SF 10, which also published an interesting poll about consumer reaction to Promoted Tweets and more.

The chat we had was a lively one–at one point I asked Bain if he would tell me Twitter’s revenues, if he “did not mind,” and he answered, “I do mind. I’m all about managing expectations.” Which is to say, they are probably less-than-impressive still.

Bain also pulled out a bullhorn to make his point to advertising clients about the noise online (and also to shut me up!).

Like I said, charming!

Here’s the two of us talking more about it, inexplicably inside a freezer at the hotel where the conference was held:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101119/video-boomtown-puts-twitters-revenue-dude-adam-bain-in-the-deep-freeze/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101118/heres-a-promoted-tweet-survey-from-twtrcon/ http://allthingsd.com/20101118/heres-a-promoted-tweet-survey-from-twtrcon/#comments Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:30:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37494

Later this morning, BoomTown will be at the TWTRCON SF 10 conference to interview Adam Bain, Twitter’s spanking new president of global revenue, in a session titled “Show Me the Money.”

I will surely make him show it!

The former head of News Corp.’s Fox Audience Network advertising platform, Bain is about as amiable a guy as there could be.

So, it will be interesting to see if he is feeling the pressure after only 45 days on the job of being the main person charged with figuring out and putting into action a lucrative business model for the San Francisco-based microblogging start-up.

No pressure, Adam! (But be forewarned: Don’t be fooled by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo’s friendly smile.)

Until then, I embedded a poll below that TWTRCON is releasing today on Twitter Promoted Products.

Among the key findings:

• Most Twitter business users have noticed Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts.

• As users, most have had a neutral reaction toward these products; the reaction is least favorable toward Promoted Accounts. Promoted Trends have had the highest response rate, with 37% saying they’ve clicked on a Promoted Trend to learn more.

• Half of corporate Twitter users are somewhat or very interested in Promoted Products as a marketing vehicle. Ten percent of respondents are at companies that are already experimenting with these products.

• About half of business users want to see more metrics to understand the potential ROI of Promoted Tweets, Trends or Accounts. One in five describe Promoted Products as a “very powerful tool” or the “future of advertising.”

• Thirteen percent believe that “users will push back.” Others would like to see Promoted Products better integrated into the Twitter user experience.

Here’s the full poll:

TWTRCON oneforty Promoted Products Survey 2010 1118

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101118/heres-a-promoted-tweet-survey-from-twtrcon/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100928/exclusive-myspace-and-rubicon-project-in-fan-swap-deal/ http://allthingsd.com/20100928/exclusive-myspace-and-rubicon-project-in-fan-swap-deal/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:48:47 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34319

MySpace is trading most of the assets of its Fox Audience Network to the Rubicon Project in exchange for a significant equity minority stake, according to sources close to the situation.

Under the deal, which is nearly complete with a signed term sheet, MySpace will hand over a number of parts of FAN, including most of its 300 employees.

FAN–after a number of attempts to spin off from News Corp. (NWS), which owns the advertising network and MySpace–was recently spun into the social networking site after the departure of its top exec, Adam Bain, to Twitter.

But News Corp. and MySpace management decided it made less sense to keep most of FAN within MySpace, which is in the midst of a massive overhaul of the troubled service that will debut in a few weeks. MySpace will keep parts of FAN related to user data, said sources.

Both companies are based in the Los Angeles area. Rubicon is one of three big “yield optimizers,” which aim to help publishers manage their relationship with advertising networks so they get the highest possible dollar for the ad space. It competes with PubMatic and AdMeld.

A variety of rumors have swirled around FAN and a number of ad companies over the last several months. One recently in AdExchanger.com had Rubicon being folded into MySpace.

Not so. Instead, this deal is similar to one that News Corp. did in January of this year with Flixster, spinning its Rotten Tomatoes movie-review unit into the San Francisco social movie site for a large minority stake in the combined entity.

Several companies were looking at the pieces of FAN, sources said, but Rubicon was the cleanest option.

It’s a save all around. Sources said Rubicon had hired boutique investment bank Allen & Co. to look at a variety of alternatives for it and also had been reshuffling its staff.

BoomTown has calls in to both companies and am awaiting official comment.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100928/exclusive-myspace-and-rubicon-project-in-fan-swap-deal/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100823/bain-leaves-news-corp-s-fan-which-will-be-integrated-into-myspace-the-internal-memo-of-course/ http://allthingsd.com/20100823/bain-leaves-news-corp-s-fan-which-will-be-integrated-into-myspace-the-internal-memo-of-course/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:29:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=32776

Adam Bain (pictured here), the well-regarded exec who ran the Fox Audience Network, called FAN, is going to Twitter to head up its early but increasingly aggressive advertising revenue efforts.

Here is the internal memo from News Corp. digital head Jon Miller about the changes at the ad network, in which it is clear the company is scrambling to shift strategy.

News Corp. (NWS) had been working on a plan for more than a year to spin off FAN and sell a piece of it to private equity investors, in part to hold onto Bain.

Now, it will go spinning back to MySpace, its principal source of ad inventory.

In his memo to employees below, Miller talked about the spin-off discussions, which failed principally due to issues over internal revenue share with MySpace.

Thus, back to the troubled social networking site, which is–after much exec turmoil–being run by Mike Jones. Jones has been trying to reinvigorate MySpace with a new look and a strategy focused on music and entertainment content.

Said Miller: “By aligning the FAN platform directly with MySpace, we will be able to utilize its services to further drive MySpace’s revenue efforts and to play a key part of the site’s planned re-launch later this year.”

News of Bain’s departure as FAN president–after a dozen years at News Corp.–to become a top exec at Twitter was first reported by TechCrunch earlier today, but without details of what would happen to FAN.

Bain also addresses his departure in the memo below.

First, here is the Miller memo:

Dear FAN employees:

I wanted to address the media reports this morning regarding Adam’s departure and also share some details on our plans for FAN moving forward. First off, Adam Bain will indeed be departing FAN–a company he has led from the ground up and built into one of the Web’s top five advertising platforms in just over two years. He has been an invaluable asset to this company and we wish him well in the future.

In addition, today we are announcing a plan to move forward with an integration of FAN’s team and technology directly with MySpace. As many of you know, we have had discussions with a number of interested parties in recent months with respect to potential partnerships involving FAN. After deliberating over these external options, we ultimately decided that the best path for FAN–and for News Corp.–is to put this leading-edge technology to work to benefit our existing assets. By aligning the FAN platform directly with MySpace, we will be able to utilize its services to further drive MySpace’s revenue efforts and to play a key part of the site’s planned re-launch later this year.

Bruce Wiseman will work closely with Mike Jones and Jack Kennedy on the overall MySpace integration efforts, and you will be hearing more from your managers shortly on details regarding the integration and how it will affect you. In addition, we will be sharing information broadly with you as much as possible over the next several weeks.

Lastly, I want to thank all of you for your commitment and dedication to FAN over the past two years–this is an incredibly talented team that’s accomplished a great deal in a very short amount of time. Also, please join me in once again thanking Adam for all his work–he will be missed both personally and professionally–and we look forward to crossing paths with him in the future.

Regards,
Jon Miller

And here is the Bain memo to his employees:

Guys–

I wanted to let you know that after 12 years at Newscorp, I’m moving on to pursue a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in San Francisco.

As you can imagine, this is a pretty emotional decision and one that didn’t come easily. I’ve literally grown up inside this company and will always be grateful for the amazing opportunities that were afforded to me–the greatest among them: the opportunity to work with and lead this team.

The things we’ve done in the ad business–Self-Serve, Targeting, Segmentation and our work with big data–are too numerous to detail here, but they are industry-defining and have set Newscorp up to succeed for many years to come.

My deep thanks to Jon Miller–I’m humbled by the freedom and support given to me here at FAN. And lastly, I want to thank you, my team. I will miss the heck out of you, but I’m psyched to watch you continue to succeed, albeit from afar.

Bruce will be leading the company thru this transitional period.

Thanks again for all of your support and the privilege of leading this extraordinary group over the last two years.

–ab

Finally, here is the News Corp. official press release on the whole, well, messy thing:

MYSPACE AND FOX AUDIENCE NETWORK ANNOUNCE ORGANIZATIONAL INTEGRATION PLAN

MySpace to Leverage FAN’s Team and Leading Advertising Platform FAN President Adam Bain to Depart

Los Angeles, Calif.–August 23, 2010–News Corporation’s MySpace (http://www.MySpace.com) and Fox Audience Network (FAN) today announced a plan to integrate the FAN business directly with MySpace. The move will enable MySpace to leverage FAN’s team and its leading technology platform. In addition, FAN announced that its President, Adam Bain, will leave the company to pursue other opportunities.

“FAN and MySpace have worked together closely over the past several years and this integration will further align these two properties,” said Jon Miller, Chairman and CEO of Digital Media for News Corporation. “Adam has been an invaluable asset to News Corp, having led FAN’s growth from the ground up into one of the Web’s largest ad platforms, and we wish him well in the future.”

“By fully integrating FAN’s platform and team, we are in a great position to further leverage FAN’s technology, which allows advertisers to serve the right ad to the right person and apply that to content across MySpace to provide a more relevant experience for our users,” said Mike Jones, President of MySpace. “The FAN team is incredibly talented and we’re excited to welcome them to the MySpace family.”

Fox Audience Network was created in 2007 and currently reaches more than 150 million Internet users. The company leverages proprietary advertising technology to create highly-targeted advertising campaigns for a wide range of marketers, while also delivering cutting-edge tools and services to third-party publisher partners, advertising agencies and research companies.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100823/bain-leaves-news-corp-s-fan-which-will-be-integrated-into-myspace-the-internal-memo-of-course/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100419/exclusive-news-corp-digital-media-group-contemplates-spin-off-and-equity-sale-of-fan/ http://allthingsd.com/20100419/exclusive-news-corp-digital-media-group-contemplates-spin-off-and-equity-sale-of-fan/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:03:27 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=26981

While there have been reports that News Corp. is selling off its advertising unit, Fox Audience Network, the company has actually been in talks with a variety of private equity firms about spinning it off and selling only a 20 to 30 percent chunk of it.

Such a deal might not happen, of course, but the strategy behind this approach is related to a desire to create a strong consortium of advertising networks to fight the growing power of Google in the race to match display ad buyers with display ad sellers.

The worry: If Google (GOOG) dominates that business in the same way it dominates search, it’s game over.

The strategy is being spearheaded by News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller, who has played a role in a variety of moves by the media giant to thwart Google in the content space.

Also involved is Adam Bain, who runs FAN and who would be CEO of the potentially independent unit. The well-regarded exec has been of interest to a number of other companies of late, so a new company might also be a way to keep him in place.

Sources said Miller began to get some incoming investor interest in buying FAN, which has morphed into the current talks.

FAN sells ads for MySpace and other News Corp. sites, as well as some third-party partners. It is in the Top 10 of ad networks, with 147.6 million unique monthly visitors.

Under one possible scenario, which values FAN at about $150 million, a private-equity player–such as Silver Lake Partners–would own a piece but also guarantee a certain amount of additional funding to spur growth.

The goal here is to take on Google and its ad-buying power either by rolling up ad networks or exchanges or by “federating” them–pulling them into an alliance.

Critically important to such an ambitious plan by News Corp. is cooperation from at least one of the trio of big of ad networks at Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO) and AOL (AOL).

In addition, other ad networks could be part of the group, such as OpenX, which is strong in Europe. Interestingly, Miller is the chairman of Los Angeles-based OpenX.

There is, of course, a mass of onerous logistical issues with such a scheme, including a variety of technical differences among ad exchanges and the need for cooperation among many different companies.

“We would not want this to be ad confederation light,” said a source at one major player in the space. “Because then it’s worse than working alone.”

In addition, not everyone is worried about Google–despite its acquisition of DoubleClick–taking over the display network space as easily as it took over the search market. Currently, while AOL has the top spot, there is no dominant player akin to Google’s overwhelming position in the search market.

News Corp. declined to comment about its plans for FAN.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100419/exclusive-news-corp-digital-media-group-contemplates-spin-off-and-equity-sale-of-fan/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090710/digital-musical-chairs-at-myspace-and-fim-keeps-going-and-going-and-going/ http://allthingsd.com/20090710/digital-musical-chairs-at-myspace-and-fim-keeps-going-and-going-and-going/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:23:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=15662 As BoomTown previously reported, there have been a lot of exec moves at Fox Interactive Media and its MySpace unit, which seem to be continuing.

Especially departures, it seems, as the massive restructuring of the digital units of News Corp. (NWS) keeps shaking out.

Top engineer Max Engel (pictured here), who ran the social networking site’s open initiatives, for example, is leaving to join the new stealth start-up being helmed by ex-MySpace employees, including former COO Amit Kapur.

In a blog post on his Web site yesterday, titled “Farewell, MySpace…,” Engel did not say where he was headed, but noted:

“While MySpace presented opportunities through their scale and reach, I’ve spent the past 3 years at large companies, and now I’m ready to go small and give the startup life a try.”

In addition, while I was poking around on this story, sources also told me that there are more higher-level departures in the works, including those whom the new team of execs at Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace had kept in place, despite a recent round of layoffs.

Those execs include Tom Andrus (pictured here), who was a key product exec in the last regime at MySpace, sources said, but is poised to go. His former charge was as SVP of product management under MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson.

While Anderson remains at MySpace, his role has been changed and product is now headed by Jason Hirschhorn, and Andrus reportedly decided recently that he did not want to stay at the company in a lesser role.

Andrus is also listed as a developer at Gray Ghost Ventures on LinkedIn.

In the longer term, sources said it is also likely that once he completes the work to downsize MySpace’s international operations–which were cut drastically–its head, Travis Katz (pictured here), will move on in the fall.

While some thought he would leave during MySpace’s international layoffs several weeks ago, he did not, given all the work involved in closing down a lot of operations there after 67 percent the staff abroad was cut.

Katz, sources said, is preparing to move to California in the next several weeks and is interested in working for a start-up, after many years at News Corp.

Lastly, on the goodbye train, is MySpace Music’s SVP Strategy and Global Marketing, Jamie Kantrowitz (pictured here).

She had previously worked as a top exec in MySpace’s international business.

Not everyone is bidding adieu, though, although they are moving chairs.

Dan Fawcett (pictured here), president of Fox Digital Media, is likely to be moving to work with News Corp. digital head Jon Miller as his general counsel and right-hand man at the Fox Interactive Media division.

The former GC, Mike Angus, has moved to FIM’s Fox Audience Network, run by Adam Bain.

FIM, of course, is being rejiggered into a new smaller unit, as I previously reported, and is likely to be renamed simply the Digital Media Group.

(Full disclosure: FIM is owned by News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones–owner of this site.)

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