Drop in MySpace Traffic to Cut $100M Off Google Ad Deal

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on November 5, 2009 - 1:00pm.

New York - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace may lose out on at least $100 million of the $900 million it was contracted to receive from a search advertising agreement with Google (NASD: GOOG), due to lackluster traffic to the website, the Financial Times reported.

"We're still losing traffic," News Corp. chief operating officer Chase Carey told FT.com. "It's a business in transition."

FT reports that the $900 million deal with Google "essentially paid for the estimated $580 million purchase price of MySpace."

According to Hitwise data, MySpace's share of all U.S. visits to social networking sites fell 67% over the past year; MySpace attracted 30.2% of visits in September, while Facebook accounted for 59% of all visits -- up 194% from the 19% of all visits it drew a year earlier.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/t2zc9 (Financial Times)

http://snipurl.com/t2zfy (DMW previous coverage)