Web 3.0 & Time Warner (Part 1)

Introduction

Time Warner Inc. is a leading media and entertainment company, whose businesses include interactive services, cable systems, filmed entertainment, television networks and publishing. The company is rumored to be in a number of restructuring discussions to spin off various pieces of its business. Nothing concrete has been announced yet along these lines.

Time Inc. won four out of five categories in the Magazine Publishers of America 2007 Digital Awards, with Website of the year winners including TIME.com in the Business/News category; InStyle.com in the Fashion category; EW.com in the Entertainment/ Celebrity category (with People.com in second place); and SI.com in the Sports/Enthusiast category.

Through Time Inc.’s aggressive digital initiatives, the company has experienced great success online. Time, Inc.’s Web sites attract more than 19 million unique visitors each month (as of February 2007), more than double the audience of the next-largest magazine publisher. CNNMoney.com is the largest business and financial Web site among vertical sites and the fourth-largest overall after the large portal channels.

SI.com received more than 54 million page views in just one day with the launch of the 2007 Swimsuit Edition and 2.2 million video downloads by just two weeks after the launch. TIME magazine offers a fully searchable online archive dating back to its founding in 1923. People.com continues to lead in entertainment news and, as of March 31, 2007, was #1 in page views in the entertainment news category and #2 in unique visitors.

During the six months ended June 30, 2007, the Company generated revenues of $22.164 billion (up 8% from $20.599 billion in 2006), Operating Income before Depreciation and Amortization of $6.640 billion (up 29% from $5.129 billion in 2006), Operating Income of $4.476 billion (up 25% from $3.571 billion in 2006), Net Income of $2.270 billion (down 8% from $2.477 billion in 2006) and Cash Provided by Operations of $3.119 billion (down 25% from $4.157 billion in 2006).

The Company earns its online advertisement revenue through AOL.com and with partner site Advertising.com. In 2Q07, the Company’s online advertisement revenues increased 16% driven by display and paid-search advertising on AOL. While on the other side, advertising on partner sites through Advertising.com rose 32%.

Display advertising on the AOL network increased 15% while page search on the AOL network was up 6%. Average monthly domestic unique visitors for the second quarter was 114 million, up compared to 111 million for the first quarter. Total domestic page views were up 18% to approximately 52 billion. According to ComScore Video Metrix, the Company was ranked 6th in terms of online video properties with a market share of 2% in July 07.

As a part of its future growth strategy, Time Warner wants to take advantage of the strong and continuing secular online trends to grow its advertising revenues. The company has been aggressively managing its internet assets, pursuing new ventures and acquiring and making investments in the internet space. Time Inc. has brought an end to its Life newspaper supplement and has gone online with its entire collection of 10 million photos. Clearly the focus is to develop online properties. We will take a look at Time Warner’s Internet properties in the following posts.

(To Be Continued)

This segment is part 1 in the series : Web 3.0 & Time Warner
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