Even media companies funded by billionaires are not immune to the challenges facing the media and digital advertising industries.
Last week, 22 employees were laid off at Time — which is owned by Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff and his wife and philanthropist Lynne Benioff — as part of a larger reduction in operating costs amid declining advertising revenue. Cuts were made across the editorial, sales, marketing, technology and TIME Studios teams, according to a memo from CEO Jessica Sibley sent to Time employees last week and obtained by Digiday. And there are more cost-cutting measures to come, including limiting the number of contractors and downsizing the New York headquarters.
At the heart of these changes is focusing the company’s editorial and business strategy on its “most commercially successful work” and the “biggest growth opportunities” at Time, which are reporting on leadership issues – particularly in the AI, climate and health categories,” Sibley wrote. This has played a big role, in part, in the sales team’s shift to B2B revenue strategy.
In the latest episode of the Digiday podcast (recorded on July 22, before the layoff announcement), Sibley discusses why she sees Time’s B2B revenue strategy as the best path for continued growth and talks about other areas of revenue opportunity, including partnerships with AI technology companies like OpenAI and Perplexity.
Below are highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Participation in AI negotiations
From a business perspective, I would say we’ve seen two paths, particularly in media with AI. There’s the negotiation path and the litigation path. Some choose one, some choose the other, and in some cases, some media companies choose both. We’ve chosen to negotiate or be part of the AI ecosystem… This is, in my opinion, the most exciting but also the most disruptive technology we’ll ever see in our lifetime… (And) as CEO of Time, we want to find a way to participate in AI so we can continue to do what we do and what we’ve been doing for 100 years.
We want a fair price for that when you train with our data, and that’s what we’ve wanted in the past and we want that in the future. There are also opportunities to partner with AI companies that are revolutionizing search as we’ve known it for decades, and we want to be part of the ecosystem so that Time shows up in the results in an authoritative, trustworthy way. That’s critical to being able to sustain trustworthy journalism and combat misinformation and disinformation in all different formats.
The shift from B2C to B2B
We were the only ones to remove the paywall, but we felt it was the right thing to do for our brand, our mission and our purpose…You should be able to use Time.com for free, not just what we’re covering today, but information from 100 years ago to help you better understand events around the world.
This was all part of our business decision and we wanted to put resources where our opportunities were best. And since I joined at the beginning, there has been a real shift and re-orientation in this business towards a B2B focused revenue model.
So when I say B2B, I mean our direct-sold advertising business… growth in the events space… (and) strategic partnerships, again rooted in our trusted journalism, and working with companies like Statista to build exciting new lists and content focus areas.
The results are available
Our advertising revenue is up. We’ve been able to really focus on cross-platform, integrated, cross-platform opportunities that we offer directly to our new and existing clients to give them incredible opportunities to drive their business. So we’re working with the best blue chips, global names that have the biggest brands and the biggest budgets, and we’re working directly with them on programs throughout the year… The results speak for themselves. We’re up 20% and we’re looking at a very strong second half.
