• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 2, 2007

Ushering in an age of convergence, Time Inc. has tapped a digital star to lead its Business and Financial Network -- Vivek Shah, formerly president of digital publishing. The Business and Financial unit was formed last year when Time Inc. combined the ad sales staffs of Fortune, Money, Business 2.0 and Fortune Small Business magazines.

Making way for Shah is Chris Poleway, whose presidency was hampered by a dismal print market. Indeed, in the first half of this year, ad pages for Fortune were down over 17%, and ad pages for Money down 23% year-over-year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

Shah, meanwhile managed to grow CNNMoney.com--the online flagship for the Business and Financial Network--to such an extent that it s revenues offset declines on the print side.

CNNMoney.com was itself formed last year by pooling the digital resources of Fortune, Fortune Small Business, and Business 2.0., together with sister company CNN.

Talking to OnlineMediaDaily at the time, Shah attributed the consolidation of Time Warner's Web properties to several industry trends: consumers' growing desire to get all their news from one source; a demand from advertisers and media buyers to scale their buys; and a strengthening ad market.

"All of the research we do tells us that readers are narrowing the number of sites they visit in a day," said Shah. "And from an advertiser perspective, it's very attractive because it allows them to build large campaigns that will have a bigger impact."

As a result, CNNMoney.com was the most visited business-destination Web site last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The site beat competitors Forbes.com, Marketwatch.com, BusinessWeek.com and WSJ.com in number of unique visitors, page views and gross-usage minutes.

Shah also oversaw February's overhaul of the CNNMoney.com site -- opening it to incorporate more outside financial news providers and introducing a real-time stock ticker/news service.

More recently, Shah brokered an exclusive multiyear partnership with contextual ad service Quigo. The deal, which extends across all Time Inc. Web properties, is expected to generate an estimated $100 million over three years.