City AM has reported a more than 70 per cent year-on-year uplift in traffic to its website following the decision to stop printing during the Covid-19 crisis.
The business publication has also seen unique users double in March to over three million a month and newsletter subscribers rise by 12,500.
In an update, MD and founder Lawson Muncaster announced the publisher had signed up two new City Talk partners in the last week, launched a Daily Podcast, and recorded its best ever digital revenues.
“It’s now been five weeks since London went into full scale lockdown. I wanted to share an update with you about what City AM has been doing since we stopped printing on the 20th – a decision that was a no brainer, a product you hand out for free, to a business commuter that is not there – with an ad market that is in free fall,” explained Muncaster.
“No redundancies, a collective salary cut and with one focus – to be ready for when we return as a collective.
“We made the decision to furlough most of the City AM team at the end of March – currently we have 14 full-time journalists working on the website in shifts producing constant news stories. Our commercial team has been reduced to four. They are focused on content initiatives with clients and agencies, display and programmatic campaigns, well supported by our dev-ops and ad-ops teams based in New York.”
Muncaster said the CIBLS Save Our SMES Campaign, launched by City AM was the proudest work they had produced.
“I want to sincerely thank all our staff – they are just an exceptional bunch of people that defy the odds by doing what we believe in and not deviating from that script.”
