michael-barrett

New MySpace ad boss continues campaign to Xerox Facebook

Nicholas Carlson · 04/21/08 01:40PM

MySpace has a new ad boss: former marketing head Jeff Berman. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch canned the last one, Mike Barrett, for his inability to reach aggressive revenue targets. To avoid the same fate, Berman seems to have decided to follow a strategy we've heard MySpace has been following since at least last fall: Copy Facebook page by page.

News Corp. boss reorganizes Fox Interactive, cans top sales guy

Nicholas Carlson · 04/04/08 08:00AM

Fox Interactive Media — the unit overseeing MySpace and other News Corp. online properties — will miss its fiscal-year revenue projections of $1 billion by more than 10 percent, or $100 million, the WSJ reports. As a result, Fox Interactive chief revenue officer Michael Barrett is out of a job. The big problem is making money off of MySpace. It has lots of users, but as MySpace advertising partner Google has discovered, brands don't want to put their product next to Tila Tequila. So now MySpace is going to try something we thought Facebook would do — create an ad network that targets MySpace members when they visit third-party sites. It'll be called the "Fox Interactive Media Audience Network," and Adam Bain will run it. PaidContent obtained a memo from Peter Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media on the reshuffling and it's pasted below.