• by Laurie Petersen , August 2, 2007

The shift in mindset to time spent from pages viewed will work to the advantage of Time Inc.'s Web brands as the company plays up the consumer "engagement" factor of such flagship sites as People.com and SI.com, and works to land some big advertising deals, predicts John Squires, executive vice president of Time Inc.

Visitors to Time Inc.'s portfolio of sites average more than 21 minutes monthly, he said during the company's second "Digital Showcase" on Wednesday to discuss its latest online ventures with the media.

"We're now thinking about the portfolio as a true portfolio," akin to an ad network, said Squires. Fifteen Time Inc. brands are involved in the contextual ad partnership with Quigo, and will generate an estimated $100 million in revenue over the first three years.

Meanwhile, on the display and multimedia side, he said within the next few months some "very, very large deals," some of them involving cross-site sales, would be ready to announce. Detroit is particularly interested, he said.

"We're looking at how we cross-promote and move traffic across the network," he said.

In terms of investment priority, he said, a priority list exists--but it includes both the flagship brands like Time.com and vertical opportunities such as golf, health, home and fashion. ThisOldHouse.com just launched Wednesday.

The acquisition of Fan Nation--which included an investment in its parent STI and the social networking platform that company developed--will enable Time Inc. to accelerate the rollout of social networking across its brands, Squires said. The company is looking at additional acquisitions to help speed up its digital transformation in ways that fill a consumer need.

Video also continues to be a high priority, with the creation last fall of Time Inc. Studios, an in-house video production resource working hand-in-hand with editors on storytelling.

Just three months into its launch, FanNation.com is generating 4 million unique visitors and 30 million page views monthly based on internal Omniture data, said Paul Fichtenbaum, managing editor of SI.com. The site is teaching Time Inc. how to do the social media thing, and informing SI.com with the passion of the real fan base, but at an arm's-length distance from the main brand, he added--likening it to "sports talk radio ... without the advertisements." It's also given editors the flexibility to react in real-time to breaking news by starting time-sensitive blogs. That capability did not exist before, he said.

The most popular area is called "Throwdowns," a structured argument between two people in which users vote on who wins. Every day, 100-150 arguments are posted.

The personalization area of SI.com allows visitors to create a personal page that enables them to track their favorite teams and players, drawing in relevant information from both sites--thus creating a bridge with Fan Nation, he added. SI's fantasy football programming will move to Fan Nation, too, to enable better interaction among players.

People.com editor Mark Golin also rattled off some stats. The site is featuring twice as many stories as it did a year ago. It continues to be a destination site, with 64% of the traffic beginning on the People.com home page, compared to Forrester Research's benchmark of 38% for most sites. In June, it drew just over 6 million monthly unique visitors, with an average time spent of 33.7 minutes per month. (By comparison, time spent on Oprah.com averages 10.4 minutes.)

Three weeks ago, People launched its video channel by packaging together 90 videos that had been scattered across the site. Among the ongoing original programming features are "Celebrity Video Diary," in which a celebrity gets a camera and the invitation to show the audience their lives, and "What You Missed Over the Weekend," a three-minute news update every Monday morning that is especially popular when people first get to work. The video can be paused at any point for viewers who want to read all the coverage of any event featured in the package.

Other new features are a database of celebrity biographies and the People Hot List, a 24-hour rolling monitor of who's hot based on where visitors are going on the site. The real-time indicator is generated by an algorithm that assigns different weights to stories, photos, blogs, etc.

It's all about "deepening the experience," said Golin.

A "Diana Remembered" package, which went live on the site in July, will be very heavily featured at the end of the month near the anniversary of the death of the Princess of Wales. The package includes every Diana cover photo along with the original stories, features such as a gallery of hats, and a "Where were you when you heard about Diana's death?" center that drew 703 posts in the first few days.

Time Inc.'s entry to the popular online food category is MyRecipes.com, which is run from its Alabama-based Southern Progress Corp., which publishes both magazines and operates the Oxmoor House cookbook publisher.

Myrecipes.com launched with more than 26,000 kitchen-tested recipes and attracted 1.4 million unique users in its first month. On Aug. 8 it will launch a daily two-minute cooking video feature. Video podcasts are slated to launch in the third quarter, and a mobile service in the fourth quarter.

Just out of the gate and with no aggressive marketing, it has leaped into the third spot in the food category behind FoodNetwork.com and Tasteof Home in terms of time spent on site.

Other developments:

Following on the heels of its successful "Will You Marry Me?," Essence in September launches "30 Dates in 30 Days" in which five professional women go on six dates each over the course of a month. Visitors to Essence.com will select each woman's date, her choice of fashion, and where the couple goes. It will be promoted as a time-sensitive destination, with viewers urged to tune in at 10AM Eastern time each day.

CNN Mobile and SI Mobile relaunch in August.

Mark Helprin will be blogging on the campaign for Time.com.