TWX Time Warner Inc. New

By Steven Perlberg 

Turner draws in newshounds with CNN, children with Cartoon Network, and young men with Adult Swim. But Turner President David Levy said something was missing at the Time Warner Inc.-owned TV giant.

"As I looked through our portfolio of brands and the demographics we're pretty dominant in, there was a gap for millennial women," he said.

To that end, Turner has struck a deal with Refinery29, the digital media company focuses on lifestyle videos and articles for young women. The two companies will collaborate on creating digital and TV programming, and they will also sell advertising together.

How Refinery29's TV ambitions will bear fruit with Turner remains to be seen. The companies have a few early ideas: Refinery29 could hit the red carpet for the "Screen Actors Guild Awards" on TNT or tie in with "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee" on TBS.

"We currently today don't have any footprint on television. It's an incredibly high-impact, high-engagement, high-quality medium that we just really want to be producing content for," said Justin Stefano, Refinery29's co-founder and co-CEO.

As part of the arrangement, Turner has led a new $45 million funding round for Refinery29. The new financing values the digital media company at about $500 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Scripps Networks Interactive also participated in the round, which brings Refinery29's total fundraising to date to about $125 million. Turner made up more than three-quarters of the latest funding round, said a person familiar with the matter.

"Making an investment like this and developing a partnership like this helps us meet that consumer demand for video outside the traditional television space and really compete effectively across all platforms," Mr. Levy said.

Turner's investment in Refinery29 was previously reported by Recode.

The move is the latest linkup between traditional TV companies, which are on the hunt to boost their digital presence as younger viewers shun the cable bundle, and digital media companies, which are itching to get a piece of the some $70 billion TV ad market.

Comcast Corp.'s NBCUniversal, for instance, has invested in digital publishers BuzzFeed and Vox Media, while Walt Disney Co. has a stake in Vice Media.

In March, Turner led a $15 million investment round in digital media publisher Mashable. The company also announced plans to spend $100 million building out Bleacher Report, the sports website it acquired in 2012.

The digital media world's foray into television is largely in its early stages. Vox and NBCU, for instance, are collaborating on an ad sales product, and the digital media company will bring a TV series to A+E Networks-owned cable channel FYI. Vice has taken the plunge with its own cable channel Viceland, in tandem with A+E, which is jointly owned by Disney and Hearst.

Refinery29 says it brings in more than 27 million unique visitors a month to its website and reaches 225 million people across other platforms like Facebook and Snapchat. Digital measurement specialist comScore pegged Refinery29.com's traffic for the month of June at 16 million unique visitors, down from 19 million in May.

Write to Steven Perlberg at steven.perlberg@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 11, 2016 07:14 ET (11:14 GMT)

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