One year in: 7 ways Time Inc. has gone digital post-spinoff
A year in, things are still dicey. The company’s revenue fell 8.7 per cent last quarter to $680m, due in large part to sinking print advertising revenue, which still represents upwards of 80 per cent its ad revenue.
“While there are some marketers who remain devoted to physical print publications — especially large ones with substantial absolute scale — most are using digital media to satisfy marketing goals that in prior decades would have relied upon national magazines,” said Brian Wieser, senior analyst at Pivotal, painting a bleak picture for Time Inc. and other print-centric companies.
As the outlook for print continues to dim, Time Inc. has necessarily invested in digital. Here’s what it’s done in its first year as a public company.
Its digital footprint is growing.
Print circulation may be shrinking, but Time’s digital audience continues to climb. Time’s sites, which include People, Fortune and InStyle, got 104 million US uniques in May, nearly double their traffic from a year before, according to comScore.
It’s gone deep on video.
If print is Time Inc.’s past, the Web and digital video are its future. Time said at its Newfronts presentation this year that it plans to produce 10,000 videos in 2015 alone. That output has included new franchises, such as its upcoming series about astronaut Scott Kelly, as well as video extensions of its existing properties. The company also is increasing its distribution partners and announced new ways of buying video by topic and audience segments and new video ad formats.
More like this
FIPP meets…Time Inc. UK’s director of content and brand licensing, Andrew Horton
