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Finance Week moves online

Finance Week, the first weekly magazine for finance teams in large businesses, is to focus solely on its web-based edition. This will make Finance Week the first business weekly to go exclusively online.

The award-winning magazine has won widespread praise from finance directors for relevant and incisive news, analysis and comment in the 15 months since launch. Publishing director Tim Potter says: Finance Week has clearly grabbed the imagination of the market. We need to make sure it reaches all finance professionals who would find the information useful - and that is not possible in a printed format."

Finance Week has grown its circulation from 15,000 to 20,000 since launch and now reaches more than 90% of finance teams in UK companies employing more than 1,000 people. Potter says: "We have faced consistent demands to send more copies of the magazine to finance teams. By switching all our resources to the web we can meet that demand."

Finance Week's potential target market, of middle to senior finance managers and directors, is several times the size of the magazine's current 20,000 circulation. The circulation strategy to date has been to ensure that approximately three copies of the magazine are being received at every relevant location, with the aim of a high level of pass-on readership. However, Centaur now believes that delivering this 'pass on' readership online will be significantly more efficient (and rapid) both for advertisers, readers and for Centaur.

Instead of a printed magazine Centaur will publish a weekly email newsletter, enhanced by extensive links to the existing website FinanceWeek.co.uk. The website will now carry daily news and in-depth technical articles for readers to use as reference. It will offer registered users tailored email alerts, backed up by weekly and monthly specialist email newsletters. Jobs will be an important part of the offering - the Finance Week website already has over 1,500 jobs for senior finance professionals working in business online and it will continue to build on this successful online launch.

The changes will be backed by an extensive promotional campaign. This will be aimed at encouraging existing readers to register colleagues for the web-based edition and at targeting relevant new readers who are currently hard to reach.

Centaur expects both readers and advertisers will reap significant benefits from the changes:

• The aim is to more than double Finance Week's reach in a way that could not be achieved using print alone. Additional readers will come both from within companies already receiving copies of the magazine and others who may not currently qualify, eg mid-size companies, overseas readers interested in UK career opportunities. This will significantly enhance Finance Week's appeal to recruitment advertisers and, therefore, its recruitment revenue potential.
• The web medium will provide an opportunity for professional advisers and other service providers wishing to target this community to showcase their expertise in a cost-effective manner, whilst at the same time enabling Finance Week to retain a clear editorial independence. This will add significant value to the website for readers.
• It will provide an appropriate medium for new analytical information products that are an important requirement for this market and for which the printed product is not suitable.

The company will be entering into consultation with a small number of staff on the magazine who are affected by the move to online-only publishing.

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