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Fox buys online-advertising specialist

Acquisition of Strategic Data Corp. to help News Corp.'s interactive division serve graphical ads across its sites.

Candace Lombardi
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
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Candace Lombardi
Fox Interactive Media, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has acquired advertising-technology company Strategic Data Corp., the company announced Thursday.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but FIM said in a statement that SDC's proprietary technology will enable the company to serve its online network, which includes the sites of MySpace.com, Fox's American Idol and IGN Entertainment's AskMen.com, with targeted graphical advertising on its Web pages.

Last August, Google made a $900 million deal with FIM for the exclusive rights to supply MySpace, which has more than 100 million users, and other FIM sites with text-based search ads and sponsored links.

The SDC acquisition will not have any impact on that previous advertising deal, said Dan Berger, a spokesman for FIM.

"The Google deal will continue, and we are happy to continue our relationship with them," Berger said. "The Google deal is based on text-based search advertising, while SDC's tech is focused on graphical performance-based optimizing."

The SDC acquisition is the first major acquisition FIM has completed since Peter Levinsohn joined FIM as president in December. Peter Levinsohn replaced his cousin Ross Levinsohn, who announced his departure from FIM on his MySpace page.