Goldman Sachs Communacopia: Barry Diller, CEO, IAC/InterActiveCorp

Interactive Corp. (NSDQ: IACI) CEO Barry Diller was put on the defensive right from the start of his interview at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference. But Diller had explanations ready for the weakness his company has seen at HSN, LendingTree and Ticketmaster. At HSN, he insisted, the wounds have been self-inflicted, as a rapid transformation of the business has resulted in customer confusion and hesitancy. Still, he talked up HSN’s internet business (now 25 percent of sales) and the efforts it’s taking in interactive TV (buy with the remote control). At LendingTree, the problems are understandable, the result of housing weakness, although he predicted that the unit would emerge strongly when the overall industry turns around. As for weak sales at Ticketmaster, Diller said it was simply the result of less touring going on, a trend that was already reversing.

Diller sounded more confident when tacking about the company’s pure internet businesses, particularly Ask.com, which he promised would be “happily profitable” next year. He hinted at partnerships with other major search engines in order to help build market sure, but he stopped short of giving out details. That being said, he sharply rejected the idea that Ask should get into the ad network business, a la Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and now AOL (NYSE: TWX). As he sees it, the market may bear 2-3 major ad networks, but probably not more, because he said you need scale and size in order to be efficient. Although he admitted that it’s been harder to grow Ask than he anticipated, he claimed that the company has already realized a good return on the deal, in part from its Zwinky service.

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