• by Gavin O'Malley , January 10, 2006

Faced with greater competition from rival publishers and news aggregators like Yahoo! and Google, Time Inc. has ceased charging for three of its online business titles--Fortune, Fortune Small Business, and Business 2.0. Time, together with sister company CNN, has also brought the three publications under the CNNMoney.com umbrella as part of a broader site relaunch on Monday.

Vivek Shah, president of digital publishing, The Fortune/Money Group, attributed the move to several trends in online media: a growing desire from readers to get all the news they care about from one source like a news aggregator; a demand from advertisers and media buyers for scale in order to increase the effectiveness of their buys; and, of course, 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."

The CNN Money site, prior to Monday's relaunch, consisted of content from Time's Money magazine and various CNN offerings. CNNMoney.com's editorial resources now include 35 online staff reporters, CNN's news-gatherers around the world, CNN branded video, content from each of the print magazines' staff journalists, as well as archival magazine content dating back to 1985.

Shah is betting that existing Fortune and Business 2.0 print subscribers will not devalue their subscriptions now that the content is free online. "We believe there's a large base of subscribers who value the magazine for a number of reasons," said Shah. "If we begin to see a negative relationship, we can always make adjustments to make some content premium, for instance."

The launch is being marketed with a multi-channel ad campaign, targeted at both consumers and advertisers, which is running online and in print, as well as on TV.

CNN and Time first partnered for the launch of CNNMoney.com in late 2001.