Time Inc. on mobile strategy: All about experience

February 13, 2008

Scott Williams, vice president of business development and mobile at Time Inc.

Mobile to the world’s largest magazine publisher is all about the consumer experience. That’s Time Inc.’s strategy for taking its media brands mobile.

Like its peers, Time Inc. is looking for new revenue streams beyond print. Leveraging its content over the Internet is one way of staying relevant in the marketplace. Another is exploring mobile, but with special consideration.

“You know it’s not just about putting up content on the phone – that’s fairly easy – but it’s about mobile experiences that are meaningful to the consumer and that require a little bit more thought and effort,” said Scott Williams, vice president of business development and mobile at Time Inc., New York.

“So I’d say for 2008 primarily that’s what our focus is on,” he said.  “[We will] continue to experiment with new types of content on the phone and then build up our audience.”

Time Inc. has a portfolio of more than 125 magazines and sites, including People, Fortune, InStyle, CNN Money, Time magazine and Sports Illustrated.

The publisher has completed a number of studies for different magazine brands on content consumption. No surprises: readers have expressed an interest in getting content on their handsets.

Still.

“I think that one of the things we’ve seen is that what people say they want doesn’t necessarily translate into how they are actually using things,” Mr. Williams said. “So it’s a little bit of a Catch-22, but much like the early days of the Internet, we’re still trying to figure things out as we go.”

Which content works best?
That said, Time Inc. is pressing ahead with its plans to increase mobile presence. 

For example, the company is relaunching Sports Illustrated’s mobile site sometime in the second quarter.

“That’s going to be very aggressive what we’re trying to do,” Mr. Williams said. “[Sports enthusiasts will have access to] full sports score stats and news. It’s going to be very involved.”

People and InStyle already have downloadable mobile applications that are available for premium purchase as $3.99-a-month subscription products. Expect companion WAP sites for both magazines in the first half of this year.

The publisher also will continue to create mobile-specific content for its WAP sites.

“One of the big product-development differentiators that we’re looking at in mobile is figuring out what content works the best [for the channel],” Mr. Williams said. “Moving a magazine onto the Web didn’t work. I don’t think moving a full Web site onto the mobile phone is going to work any better either.

“So our first step is figuring out what content we have readily available for mobile, mainly stuff on the Web, that we can re-purpose quickly and easily that makes sense for use in the mobile environment,” he said.

Mr. Williams does not see mobile simply as a brand extension. It’s more like a new part of the brand’s overall business. In the long run, Time Inc.’s mobile editions will be primarily advertising-supported.

“The majority of our revenues [last year] were either subscription- or retail-based,” he said. “Going forward we expect that banner ads or the equivalent will be the primary revenue driver.”

To recruit new subscribers to mobile, Time Inc. realized the importance of easy-to-remember mobile Web addresses. Also, the company is making sure that its mobile sites are well crawled by Google and Yahoo, thus helping with search engine optimization.

“You’ll probably also see us doing more cross-linking, much like we do on the Web with related sites, to help build up that audience,” Mr. Williams said.

“Discovery is far and away the biggest issue that we face in mobile today,” he said. “So we’re going to try to make it as easy as possible for consumers to find us and as intuitive as possible as well.”