Time Consolidates Financial Sites

Time Warner’s CNN and Time Inc. have re-launched CNNMoney.com with more content from Time Inc.’s business and finance titles, abandoning subscriber-only models and depending on advertising.

The new site will house the online content of Fortune, Fortune Small Business, Business 2.0 and Money. Editorial contributions will come from the site’s own dedicated newsroom in New York, from the CNN team worldwide, from the magazines’ journalists and from archival magazine content.

“This is the most exciting development for our business titles since we first began using the Web,” John Huey, Time Inc.’s editor-in-chief, said in a statement. “It’s also the culmination of almost a decade’s effort to get all our business and financial editorial assets working together in one place online. This is going to give us a big competitive advantage because this is truly what the readers out there want.”

New ad opportunities on the site include a 728×210 “super-rectangle” at the top of the home page, along with a 336×600 half-page ad along the right column, each served no more than one day per week to preserve the unit’s impact. The site also offers occasional roadblocks of the home page, category pages, or individual magazine pages, according to the site’s media kit.

“CNNMoney.com provides an uncluttered environment consisting of fewer advertising units to enhance visitors’ experience — and your marketing message,” touts the media kit.

Even though the sites have similar demographics in terms of average age, income, consumption habits and professional/managerial attributes, there was very little overlap in unique visitors, according to CNNMoney.com spokesperson Carrie Welch. An entirely new 21-person team was built to handle ad sales, she said.

A new Insurance center will present sponsored content in a 150×30 unit on insurance, auto, or real estate-focused content. Besides this kind of contextual targeting, the site offers company, daypart and geographic targeting. CNNMoney.com also sells pre- and post-roll video spots synchronized with a 728×90 banner on streaming video content from CNN.com’s broadband network.

According to Nielsen NetRatings, the combined, non-duplicated audience of the sites in November 2005 was 9 million unique visitors. In addition, advertising revenues grew 67-percent year-to-year, according to Nielsen AdRelevance.

“We’re excited to be building upon an already impressive foundation. We expect the new CNNMoney.com to completely redefine this market,” said Vivek Shah, president of digital publishing for Time Inc.’s Fortune/Money group. Along with Shah, the management team of the site consists of Chris Peacock, editor; Greg Schwartz, VP of sales; and Joelle Andersen, marketing director.

The launch will be backed by an online and offline ad campaign, mostly on Time Warner properties. The online campaign launched Monday on several Time Warner sites, including CNN.com, SI.com, and EW.com. Ads targeting advertisers are running on several trade publications.

Print and TV campaigns will break in the coming weeks, mostly in Time Inc. magazines and CNN broadcast outlets. “Nearly all of the media is in-house, which is considerable given the size of the house,” Welch quipped.

CNNMoney.com originally launched in October 2001 as a joint venture between CNN and Money Magazine. The addition of the new titles will expand the site’s content of breaking business news, personal finance features, commentary and planning tools.