• Crain's New York Business, Tuesday, August 21, 2007 10:30 AM

Time is still losing ad pages in the face of a major overhaul earlier this year, while Time Inc. siblings Fortune, Money and Business 2.0 have all seen double-digit ad slumps in the first half. That its print properties are in a seeming death spiral is nothing new, but despite higher Web traffic and the enormous resources the company has poured into digital media, total ad revenue at the publisher was up an anemic 1% in the second quarter.

Notes Alan Schanzer, managing partner of digital media planning firm MEC: interaction, "Time Inc. has yet to find a central digital strategy for itself." He points out that People.com missed its chance to own the entertainment news category and is a runner-up to gossip site TMZ, while Time.com faces stiff competition from other news and information sites. Meanwhile, CNNMoney.com combines four business magazines brands--Fortune, Money, Fortune Small Business and Business 2.0-which Schanzer says have little to do with each other.

A Time Inc. spokeswoman claims People.com owns its category for viewer engagement and CNNMoney.com garners a massive audience, with revenue up 68% this year. Traffic across all of the publisher's U.S. Web sites now averages 20 million unique visitors a month and, she says, "that's more than our five nearest competitors in magazine publishing combined."

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