After stepping down from his current position later this year, Jim Spanfeller, the president and CEO of Forbes.com, will take his digital content expertise to the masses when he leaves Forbes later this year by starting his own media management company.
Spanfeller’s new business will help traditional media companies bridge the gap that still exists between the analog and the digital marketplace.
“We’re going to help traditional media companies move to the digital space,” said Spanfeller. “We’ll do that by managing their digital properties for a time, getting them up to speed and focused, training and hiring staff, and eventually giving them back the entity as a revenue producing business,” he explained.
The new business, which offers sales and sales training, will include leveraging customer relationships — an important aspect in developing an audience for multichannel content.
Spanfeller is bringing on a small team to run the as-yet-unnamed entity. “I’m talking to a few people coming in as partners, so that might affect the name [of the company],” he said. Client prospects are traditional media companies, including magazines, newspapers, and cable television companies.
In his nine years with Forbes, Spanfeller oversaw the growth of the company’s digital holdings to a network of sites with 40 million unique monthly visitors. Forbes.com alone claims 18 million monthly uniques. Spanfeller has also been responsible for driving expanded lifestyle and other audience-grabbing coverage on Forbes.com and for brokering major site sponsorships and other revenue-generating efforts. He recently participated in a merger between the print and online departments at Forbes.
Forbes has not named a successor for Spanfeller. He will remain with Forbes through a transition period that will last at least until Labor Day.
