Time Inc. announced the launch of Real Time, the latest addition to the company's portfolio of advertising products.
Real Time provides advertisers share of voice on trending content across Time Inc.’s domestic websites in addition to integration within social promotion, according to the company.
With the new product, advertisers can customize their own audience segments and leverage the company’s highest-performing content.
"We price Real Time at a minimum spend and either a CPM or CPE buy type," a company spokesperson tells Folio:.
To identify trending content, the company uses both in-house proprietary technology called One.Bot and social media tech platform SocialFlow.
“Together we’re going beyond traditional media reach to actually ensure the attention of Time Inc.’s large and valuable social media audience,” said SocialFlow CEO Jim Anderson in a statement.
SocialFlow's platform evaluates the attention of social audiences in real time. The technology activates this data by enabling the targeting and delivery of ads by demographic and topical category to their social media audience.
"Benchmarks for trending content are proprietary," the company says.
Volvo Cars of North America is the first partner to take advantage of this new capability. Mindshare, Volvo’s media agency, brokered the media partnership and worked closely with Time Inc. to tailor the execution to connect with luxury consumers through engaging lifestyle content.
For Time Inc., this launch is just a piece of a much larger strategy, which includes e-commerce and live events, in addition to developing these new digital advertising streams.
With the legacy publisher's revenues receding, Time Inc. is currently in a period of fast-paced digital investment. The company reports that its overall global audience across all platforms rose 19 percent to 155 million in 2015, while its social media footprint and video audience grew 45 and 86 percent, respectively.
Although chairman and CEO Joe Ripp has acknowledged the difficult environment of magazine media, he said in a statement Time Inc. is looking for a “path to profitable growth” for each of the company's titles.
In December, Time Inc. announced a new partnership with digital advertising platform GumGum and streaming video distribution deals with Hulu, Yahoo and Zealot Networks.
