11:54 a.m. | Updated Time Warner announced on Wednesday that it had selected the head of a digital advertising firm to run its Time Inc. magazine unit.

The company said that Laura Lang, chief executive of Digitas, would take over the world’s largest magazine company, which publishes 21 titles in the United States, including People, InStyle and Sports Illustrated. Time Inc. had been effectively without leadership for nine months after the troubled departure of its former chief executive, Jack Griffin, who clashed with a decades-old company culture.

For Time Warner, its magazines represent an antiquated business model that the company is trying to reform in the digital era as it continues to place an emphasis on content. Time Warner’s chief executive, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, has said he plans to increasingly digitize magazine brands. Tablet versions of almost all titles will be available to subscribers by the end of the year. Print ads will be incorporated into the tablet versions.

Ms. Lang has headed Digitas, a unit of the advertising giant Publicis, since 2008. Her challenges at Time. Inc. will be considerable. While some titles like People continue to bring in advertisers, others have bled advertising dollars. Some analysts have suggested that Time Warner spin off its magazine unit, though that’s unlikely.

In the quarter that ended in September, revenue at Time Inc. fell 1 percent to $889 million, though John K. Martin, chief financial officer at Time Warner said “the ad market appears to have stabilized.”

Read the Time Warner news release here.

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