FIM to Serve Ads Outside News Corp Empire

In February, MySpace parent Fox Interactive Media, a News Corp company, acquired ad tech firm Strategic Data Corporation to handle the ad management back end for a portion of the display ads on its sites. At the time FIM said it would use the system to manage ads targeted to all sites in its network, excluding FoxSports.com, IGN Entertainment, Rotten Tomatoes, Fox.com, and of course, MySpace.

Now FIM President Peter Levinsohn says that ad management platform is near ready, and could eventually extend to media properties beyond the FIM and News Corp walls. According to Reuters, Levinsohn told an audience at the Reuters Media Summit in New York today the platform could be unveiled as early as the first half of ’08.

This is no big surprise, considering Yahoo is also aiming to be the next big ad network and AOL already does it with Advertising.com. Oh, and Google serves a few ads on other properties, too….

“We’re well down the path in terms of discussions with some of the other News Corp properties to do ad serving,” he said, according to the story. “Ultimately we’ll take the company off network and become an ad network for assets outside of the News Corporation empire.”

So, does that make his boss Darth Murdoch?