Inside Time's AI playbook
Relying on partnerships
This week, I had a conversation with Time CEO Jess Sibley. We spoke about how Time is rapidly diversifying its business to play defense against the AI tsunami while also relying on many partnerships with AI companies to embed AI into its product and business.
This is the essential work of reinvigorating legacy brands. I will be having a similar conversation in Cannes next week in Cannes with Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Willa Bennett and Hearst global CRO Lisa Ryan. We’ll focus on how they’re rethinking what Cosmo means in 2025. The live podcast recording is at the Hearst House on Monday, June 16 at 10am. There will be mimosas for those who want to cannonball into the week and are clearly not Gen Z.
And the topic of adapting to AI will be a core to our live cocktails and conversations recording of People vs Algorithms on Thursday, June 18, at 3:30pm, which in Cannes is cocktail hour. I’ll be joined poolside at the Dotdash Meredith Villa by Troy Young, Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel and Axios media correspondent Sara Fischer.
I’ll also be using Subtext all week to try out its group texting product. If you sign up, you’ll get a handful of messages from me throughout the week about the oddities of Cannes, what I’m hearing in endless meetings and cocktail parties, and which ad tech companies have the biggest boats.
Hope to see some of you out and about in Cannes, which I won’t defend as essential or without its sins but have come to appreciate as a remaining bit of glamor in a business that, let’s be honest, can be a day-to-day grind. It also serves as a handy metaphor and barometer.
Now onto my conversation with Jess.
Time’s practical AI playbook
There’s an emerging publisher playbook for dealing with the myriad challenges of transitioning to an AI era of computing that’s rooted in practicality. The good part of dealing with waves of existential threats and the erosion of marketplace power is that it’s a forcing function for practicality. Crying about how unfair Google is to take away so much traffic won’t do a lot, not when Google is locked in a titanic battle against OpenAI to preserve its dominance.
Instead, most big publishers I speak to are operating playbooks that seek to split the difference between the block-and-sue and build approaches. Publishers are adding bot-monitoring tools like Tollbit and citation tools like ProRata.AI. These are hedges for now. They’re rapidly diversifying their businesses away from the pageview economy, leaning more heavily on events, agency services and IP offshoots. Meanwhile, they’re cautiously adopting AI tools internally and picking their spots with using AI to improve their products.
This hodgepodge of responses could prove too little, too late. The needle that must be thread is to get momentum in new business lines up and running more quickly than the decline in the old business of ads on pages and traffic from search, which faces a pretty bleak future.
This week on The Rebooting Show, I spoke with Time CEO Jessica Sibley about how a midsized publisher like Time is running this playbook.
Keep AI companies close
Time owner Marc Benioff connected Jess with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for an early conversation that eventually led to a deal Time struck with the ChatGPT maker to include Time content in 2024. Time issued an RFP to a dozen AI companies. Many ignored it, some responded with proposals that far exceeded the resources in time and money that Time would devote. Time soon whittled down to a couple finalists and linked up with Scale AI to power new AI experiences on Time. Jess recently co-hosted a dinner with Wang, whose company is reportedly set to receive a $10 billion investment from Meta and is used by many leading AI companies for its network of data labelers. The partnership led to an AI-enabled Person of the Year experience that will soon spread to the entire Time site. Time also has deals with Perplexity, ProRata, TollBit, Amazon Alexa, Verify by Fox and ScalePost.
“We want to play offense, not defense, and be very proactive and have a seat at the table,” Jess told me. “We are in the game.”
Reduce exposure to the pageview economy
The old flex: ComScore uniques. The new flex: low percentages of your business tied to ads on webpages. Only 15% of Time’s revenue is tied to ads on webpages. And of that, about half is reliance on search. Jess estimated that even a steep drop in Google referrals would impact only 3-4% of total revenue. Time has actively diversified away from the volatility of the algorithmic web by expanding its B2B programs, franchise events, and direct relationships with marketers.
“We’ve always been reliant on distribution,” Jess told me. “But we’ve figured out how to be less so than others. You can’t build a business hoping platforms don’t change the rules.”
Integrate AI at the product layer
Time used its Person of the Year package in December to pilot an AI search experience. Through its partnership with Scale Ai and ElevenLabs, Time added AI-enabled functionality like summarization, translation and a chat interface. Now it’s introducing these features as a regular part of the site experience. The initial rollout includes personalized audio versions of the Daily Brief newsletter, where users can select either a 5-or 10-minute summary, with options of narration by “Henry” and “Lucy” after Time founder Henry Luce. Time will launch a redesigned homepage with a built-in AI toolbar. This new feature set will allow users to listen to articles, receive bullet-point summaries, translate content into 24 languages, and engage in a conversational chat interface trained on editorial content. The next phase will include AI-generated custom briefings based on user preferences, delivered in audio or text.
“I'm more of a text person,” Jess said. “But not everyone is. If we can meet people where they are and give them control over how they consume our journalism, that’s a win.”
Scrap distractions
The old journalism saying is you need to drown your kittens. The idea is writers can be attached to their clever phrases but editing requires a level of ruthless practicality. The same goes for the publishing business, where chasing shiny objects is a zero-interest rate phenomenon. Time embarked on several far-afield efforts in recent years, such as acquiring a no-code platform called Brandcast that was meant to give marketers self-serve tools; diving headlong into the short-lived NFT craze with Time Pieces; and rolling out paid subscriptions for Time for Kids.
“We had made some interesting bets, that had a moment, that weren’t going to be a roadmap that we were going to continue on,” she said in what I took as an understatement that these were flights of fancy. “I had to strengthen the core of our business. That was what I needed to do day one.”
Build out B2B
Jess has taken to describing Time as a B2B media company. By this, she means to emphasize that Time has shifted from being a general interest news publisher to focusing on its cachet with top executives, from CEOs to CMOs to other business influentials. That meant scrapping its paywall in favor of an ad business that is rooted in integrated brand partnerships. Franchises like Time 100, AI 100 and Time Longevity provide ample opportunities to weave partners throughout, beyond ads to include Time’s growing events business. Jess notes that Time has its biggest audience in history and increased ad revenue by 24% year over year in the first six months of the year.
“We’re going direct,” she told me. “We’re sitting down with CMOs, chief communications officers, and chiefs of staff to build programs together. That’s where our growth is.”
Listen to the full conversation with Jess
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