IP Democracy: Fox Interactive Media Expects 538% Revenue Jump in 2006

Ross Levinsohn, President of Fox’s newly formed Interactive Media unit (FIM), gave a blow-the-doors-down presentation today at UBS Warburg’s Global Media Conference. Hoping to dispel critics of Fox’s billion-dollar Internet property buying spree, Levinsohn laid out a grand and compelling vision for how the Murdoch-owned enterprise will make tons of money off the Internet.

As proof of the wisdom of Fox’s purchase of Scout, IGN and MySpace, Levinsohn said that revenues for FIM would soar by 538% from 2005 to 2006, jumping from only $47 million to over $300 million. “The time to focus on the Internet is today,” Levinsohn said. “There are explosions over every kind of segment. Now the consumer can view content anywhere, anytime on multiple devices.”

Levinsohn rattled off so many strategic points of focus and so many new announcements that it was hard to keep track. Social networking powerhouse MySpace, which Fox acquired with its acqusition of Intermix, has added 16 million new unique users in the two months since Fox took over, raising the total number of users to over 40 million.

“We’re focusing on strong organic growth for each of these properties. We’re not slowing the growth of innovation,” Levinsohn said. MySpace launched its own record label in November, and is gearing up to launch versions in the UK and in the Chinese-speaking world. Fox plans to leverage the dynamic MySpace communities to expand its film properties and to integrate other forms of Fox content.

In terms of content integration, Levinsohn gave examples of just how the powerful mix of Fox properties come together in FIM. Fox animated show, “The Family Guy,” which no longer airs on television, will be revived as an Internet-only production in 2006, aided by a fan community of over 175K people on MySpace and promoted across the Fox sites via a “Great American Sports Writer” contest sponsored by big name advertisers, including McDonalds.

Today FIM accounts for more than 15% of U.S. ad impressions on the Internet, he contended.

Fox will also produce the website for its hit TV show American Idol and under a recently concluded deal has the rights to simoncowell.com. “Fox Interactive Media will be a must-buy for advertisers in 2006,” Levinsohn said.

It has already secured a high-profile cross-property ad deal for the DVD release of the movie “Wedding Crashers (a Time Warner film via New Line, not a Fox property)” which appeals to Fox’s youthful users.

While the company plans to create a common technical platform for the easy distribution of content across all its sites, the focus for FIM remains on personalization and market fragmentation. “We think about portals differently than most people. Traditional portals are linear for most people,” Levinsohn said.

“We’re focused on building social portals where the consumer is in the middle. Their home page is focused on their favorite things,” which can also have the happy effect of having users actually help to sell Fox products. If someone buys a Fox-generated video clip and posts it on their MySpace profile, a visitor will be able to purchase that same clip with a single click of the button.

“Consumers will be able to take our traditional content and remix it on their home pages and that’s chaotic but frankly that’s where the web is going,” Levinsohn said.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on December 6, 2005 12:06 PM to IP Democracy