(24 February 2007 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Fox Interactive Media (FIM) in the US has bought ad technology firm Strategic Data Corporation.

It is hoping to better leverage the data of its social networking site MySpace from user profiles, blogs and bulletins.

The acquisition will allow for more-refined audience segmentation and contextual micro-targetting.

Media reports state that FIM will be able to create lifestyle audience segments and ad packages for performance- and CPM-based ad campaigns. The company has not yet employed user profile information to target display ads, but it has used the data to better target Google sponsored text ads.

FIM properties generated more than 40.4 billion page views in January, according to ComScore, with the vast majority coming from MySpace. News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch recently said that MySpace is generating about $25 million per month in ad revenue, growing at about 30 per cent per quarter. Yet despite the fast growth rate, the site lags far behind revenue generated by sites of similar size, with generic ad impressions often priced at less than $1 CPMs because FIM has so far not been able to target them to visitor interests.