TIME CEO Jessica Sibley sent the following note to staff on Wednesday:
Team,
I’d like congratulate the entire TIME team on your achievements so far this year. This month alone has been an incredibly strong one for TIME. During election week, our newsroom worked around the clock, reaching TIME’s largest digital audience in 2024 and demonstrating that readers turn to TIME for information they can trust during the world’s biggest moments. TIME is delivering on its vision of covering leaders who shape the world and providing trusted guidance to our audiences.
As you know, our shared priority in TIME101 is to be a cash flow positive company in 2025. Reaching this goal will allow us to create a sustainable way to continue our mission of producing and delivering trusted journalism, which is the foundation of everything we do at TIME.
Today I am proud to announce that we have reached a significant milestone toward this goal: TIME’s Q4 cash flow has had its best performance to date. Building on the current momentum, our objectives are to maintain growth and further expand revenue streams through 2025.
This achievement is a credit to your hard work and dedication. Together, we have recalibrated our business and worked diligently to successfully grow B2B revenue and diversify our revenue streams, while implementing difficult decisions to reduce costs overall. In 2024, we:
- Delivered trusted journalism to our global audience: This year, TIME’s newsroom delivered powerful and agenda-setting journalism to our readers around the world, including exclusive interviews with President Biden, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other global leaders across government, entertainment, business, and sports—from Anthony Blinken, to Issa Rae, Selena Gomez, Coco Gauff and many more.
- Executed a successful pivot to a B2B-focused revenue model: A significant part of our transformation at TIME has been shifting to a B2B revenue-focused company (from B2C) as we prioritize increasing topline revenue growth through integrated sponsorships and strategic partnerships, which saw an +18% YoY revenue increase. We also grew paid social and digital revenue, highlighting the success of our go-to-market strategy for selling integrated programs with TIME’s event offerings, including programs we launched this year with Toyota, Merck, Glenfiddich, Cognizant, Eli Lilly and others.
- Continued to grow our global events business: We continued to expand our global events business, which convenes dynamic leaders from every sector and has now attracted more than 30,000 attendees to date. This year we will produce 31 events—a TIME record—and increased event revenue +15% YoY and event profit margin by almost 50% YoY, while introducing new formats—such as our highly successful Leadership Forum series, which included our most profitable event ever, the TIME100 Climate Leadership Forum—and offerings that align with our biggest tentpole moments. We also secured 30 new event partners, including Nike, Schneider Electric, Northern Data, Mattel, Delta, Nissan and Iberdrola.
- Expanded our branded content products: This year we integrated TIME’s award-winning branded content studio, Red Border Studios into TIME Studios. The move allows us to unlock new opportunities for advertisers to engage with TIME across our tentpoles. We collaborated with new partners like Glenfiddich, Northern Data, and Amazon Studios, as well as long-standing partners including American Family Insurance, Land O’Lakes, and P&G. We also innovated with new formats like our Executive Spotlight series and a CLIO Award-winning collaboration with Amazon Studios’ The Boys, featuring a high-impact brand integration on the cover of TIME.
- Produced industry-leading projects with TIME Studios: Several of TIME Studios’ highly anticipated projects debuted across major platforms in 2024, including Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Words with Amazon, Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam with Netflix, and the critically-acclaimed and award-winning Frida, which premiered at Sundance and is available on Amazon. TIME Studios also won its sixth Emmy Award with its Netflix documentary series Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul for Outstanding Business and Economic Documentary.
- Embraced strategic AI partnerships: This year, we embraced innovative technologies to deliver TIME’s trusted journalism to audiences worldwide while positioning ourselves to navigate the rapidly evolving media landscape. Through new partnerships with OpenAI, Perplexity, FOX Verify, ProRata AI, Tollbit, and others, we are advancing our mission and expanding access to reliable information.
- Launched new extensions of the TIME100 community: We continued to expand the TIME100 platform with exciting new extensions. This year, we built on the success of our 2023 debuts—with TIME100 Voices, the TIME100 AI list, theTIME100 Climate list, and Latino Leaders—to present additional platforms, including the first-ever TIME100 Health list, highlighting the most influential individuals in health, and The Closers, recognizing Black leaders working to close the racial wealth gap.
- Strengthened our direct audiences: In addition to developing new opportunities to monetize the scale and engagement of TIME’s social platforms where we reach an audience of more than 55 million today, growing our direct digital audiences has been a key priority in 2024. We’re already seeing success as Instagram referrals to TIME more than doubled YoY in 2024, including a +30% YoY increase in Instagram story referrals, and clickthroughs across all of our newsletters increased by +49% YoY.
- Realized our efforts to reduce costs across the business: We continued to make significant progress in improving business efficiencies by cutting the company’s cash needs by 50%, with a forecasted 70% improvement by 2025, from the end of 2022.
Thank you all for your continued dedication to TIME’s future. I’m excited to finish this year strong with each of you.
Best,
Jess
