Even if they're no longer controlled by IAC, brands like Ticketmaster, LendingTree and HSN may still pay dividends for the struggling new media giant. At least, that's the plan behind IAC's latest effort to harness the power of its widespread audience.

Rather than outsourcing the sale of its ad inventory -- a longtime practice at IAC -- the company will now reverse course and launch its own ad network. The ad network, which will group users into 9 demographic cubes (think "youth," "affluent" and "active travelers," to name a few) will sell inventory on sites both retained by IAC as well as those that the media company decided to spinoff.

At its core, the ad network comes down to a data play, but unlike many other ad networks, IAC has some rather intriguing data points, especially from the brands like Evite, Ask and Citysearch, which are all staying under the IAC umbrella. 

"We're in a unique position in that we can corroborate multiple kinds of data," IAC Advertising Solutions president Rich Stalzer said in a release. "[The data includes] declared information users offer about themselves; transactional, online purchasing activity; and inferred, such as what they do offline like attend concerts or go on dates, from the diverse portfolio of IAC sites to more precisely identify users as part of a particular audience segment."

IAC is expected to identify more cubes down the road, but for now the company's primary emphasis will be on affluent users because they are more likely to spend greater sums of money online.