In Preparation For Sale To Rubicon Project, Fox Audience Network Fires Half Its Staff

News Corp is on the verge of unloading another one of its digital businesses under Fox Interactive Media, the Fox Audience Network (FAN), to Los Angeles-based ad-optimization startup The Rubicon Project. The deal has not been signed yet and may still fall apart, but the two companies are in the final stages of negotiation, according to sources with direct knowledge of the deal. (Talks have been heating up over the past month). In preparation for the sale, or continuation as a standalone business, about half of its 300 employees were let go yesterday, most of them sales people. Rubicon is more interested in the ad technology. If the proposed deal with Rubicon goes through, it will get certain assets including FAN's ad server technology, its self-serve banner advertising platform called MyAds, and about 100 employees to help run those parts of the business. In return, News Corp will get about 20 percent of Rubicon's shares. (When Fox Interactive Media disposed of Rotten Tomatoes, it structured a similar asset-for-equity swap with Flixster). The fact that the ad server technology is one of the key assets here is particularly noteworthy, given that Rubicon's public posturing in the past was that the ad server is dead.

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