Dive Brief:
- Time Inc.—the largest magazine publisher in the U.S. —has signed an exclusive deal with Outbrain to be the exclusive external provider of recommended stories for its websites.
- As part of the deal to only use Outbrain's headline recommendation widget, Time will receive over $100 million in revenue-sharing.
- In addition to driving outside traffic to its sites, Time Inc. will utilize Outbrain to drive traffic between its different publications and will have access to it's tool that helps determine where to place stories to maximize traffic.
Dive Insight:
Time Inc. owns popular publications like People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and InStyle. Platforms like Outbrain and its competitor Taboola often present quandries for publication editors—they bring in advertising dollars, but will link to offensive stories, like "Hot Hockey Wives" and "20 Bad Girls with Smoking Mugshots." As the technology develops, the widget is likely to get smarter about what stories are promoted on what sites.
