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Contextual ad network Quigo logged its largest client win to date yesterday with the announcement that it will deliver pay-per-click ads to all of the Time Inc. online properties.

The exclusive ad deal will last for three years and is expected to generate as much as $100 million in ad sales, says the partners. Quigo will deploy a custom version of its AdSonar platform across a range of Time online titles, from Time.com, CNNMoney.com, SI.com and People.com to SouthernLiving.com, Sunset.com and CookingLight.com.

Using Quigo, Time Inc. will sell performance-based contextual ads directly to marketers, targeted both by Web site and page and by keyword subjects. For example, advertisers will be able to target the home page on InStyle.com, special sections such as Time.com’s health and science department, or specific stories using a list of keywords from “mutual funds” to Chicago Cubs”. And marketers will be able make those buys using a self-service Web interface at Time.quigo.com.

In terms of potential monthly ad viewership, it’s the largest deal to date for New York-based Quigo Technologies, which has struck ad-delivery deals with some of the marquee names in Web content.

“This is a milestone for Quigo, and helps to build on the momentum we built up last year with deals such as CareerBuilder.com and ESPN.com,” says chief revenue officer Henry Vogel. “It’s right in our wheelhouse in terms of a premium publisher in all the right categories: news, sports, home, entertainment, health and business.” Besides those sites, Quigo also serves contextual ads to Forbes.com, Foxnews.com, ABCNews.com, LonelyPlanet.com and more than 200 local and national newspaper sites.

Since it started signing those big Internet brand names last year, Quigo’s ad-platform business has grown even more swiftly than anticipated, Vogel says. After the ESPN.com deal became reality last September, the company expected that it would serve 8 billion to 10 billion monthly ad impressions by the end of 2006. Instead, viewership hit 13 billion impressions in December 2006. And Vogel says Quigo is on track to hit the 20 billion mark in monthly ad views by the end of this year.

The Time Inc. deal is also significant because until now, the media giant has been getting its contextual ads from Google and Yahoo! The alliance thus represents another popular Internet content site that has opted to switch from the big PPC ad superpowers to an independent platform such as Quigo and to start selling its own online ads.

“Large, sophisticated [online] media companies, especially those with brand equity, are looking to have a much higher degree of customization and control over their advertising,” Vogel says. “That means being able to own the relationship with their advertisers.”

Lately Quigo has been getting a lot of press treatment as the David half of a contextual rivalry with Google’s AdSense Goliath. In fact, Google’s move this month to roll out placement performance reports—letting AdWords advertisers know for the first time where on the Google network their ads appeared and how they performed—was widely acknowledged to be a response to the greater transparency of placement offered by Quigo, which has always offered reports on the specific sites running marketers’ ads.

Vogel says the company is now testing platform extensions that will let it deliver formats other than text-based ads, such as display and video. Mobile marketing and IPTV are also development aims further down the road, he says.

In fact, Quigo has been coming on so strong over the last year, both in its platform technology and in its publisher relationships, than the company has been mentioned as a possible acquisition target in the next round of online ad consolidation. It’s been suggested that, having made their buys in display ad delivery, Google or Microsoft might have a yen to plant their flag a bit deeper in contextual marketing with Quigo—or perhaps in behavioral ads with a company such as Tacoda Networks.

Vogel won’t say whether Quigo has been approached by a potential buyer or what the company’s ultimate response might be to an offer. “It’s an interesting time,” he says. “We’re pretty excited about our vision and are trying to keep our heads down and build our business. It’s simply flattering to know that there are other people who are interested in our vision too. But it’s a pretty fast-moving world, and we have to keep our options open.”