Wrapped up in an acquisition deal of the Viant company, Time Inc. has purchased a platform to distribute news stories in the form of the aging social network Myspace. While MySpace certainly doesn’t have the reach of Facebook, the site still brings in tens of millions unique views each month. Ideal for Time Inc., the company may be able to expose users to content from such media entities as Time, Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, People and Fortune.
Of course, this will give Time Inc. access to the email database of past and present Myspace users. Utilizing an email campaign to re-engage with those users, Time may attempt to bring content to users through email delivery. Both email campaigns and content distribution on the Myspace site are two strategies that Viant CEO Tim Vanderhook told Business Insider about in an interview earlier today.
Myspace has traveled a rocky road since the social network was purchased by News Corp. for $580 million during 2005. As Facebook grew and cannibalized Myspace users in droves, missteps taken by the Rupert Murdoch-owned company alienated users over the years. Eventually News Corp. sold the social network to Viant for just $35 million during 2011. The site was relaunched as part social network and part music / media discovery site in partnership with Justin Timberlake, but the site hasn’t regained it’s former glory as a major social network.
Outside of Myspace, Time Inc. believes that Viant will contribute roughly $100 million to digital advertising revenue over the next year through the Specific Media ad network. That will pile onto the $330+ million that Time generated during 2015. That should help combat the $881 million loss that Time Inc. posted during 2015 due to declining ad revenue in print magazines.
