News Corp. (NWS) parent company of MySpace.com Web site is looking to one of the three leading Internet companies to supply the network with search-based advertising.
They are looking for bids from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Google Inc. (GOOG) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) according to News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin said at a Deutsche Bank Media & Telecom conference broadcast over the Web.
"We will auction off our search business to Google, Yahoo, or MSN," Chernin said, confirming recent market buzz.
While paying $580 million for MySpace, News Corp. hasn't been able to come up with a plan that will fully monetize it yet.
While being the second most visited site on the Internet, measured by page views, it is still far behind its competitors in ad sales. One of the main reasons is because they are currently marketing 80% of their advertising space through remnant sales, which is far less lucrative than display ads which can bring up to seven or eight-times more revenue.
They are trying to turn that ratio upside down as their main strategy. The search-based plan should help to boost things exponentially when they put things in place.
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