FHM.com – winner of Website – Consumer 2009

With a substantially upgraded site, seamlessly integrating gaming, video, and social networking, the FHM team is making the most of its international brand online - effectively and profitably syndicating content across its worldwide sister sites, and those in turn contributing to its ‘incoming news’ channel.

To cap it all, FHM.com now even ranks first for Kama Sutra in Google (after Wikipedia, of course).

In another year of substantial growth, FHM’s UK and six international sites achieved close to a 100% rise in average monthly page impressions, from 38 to 70 million per month, while monthly unique users grew from 2.5 million to 4 million (period Apr '08 – Jan '09, WebTrends).

FHM.com - "knows what its audience wants, and gives it to them with both barrels"FHM.com (UK) also recorded its highest traffic in ten years for a single day, attracting 223,000 visits and 2.9 million impressions on 25 April with the announcement of the winner of the 100 Sexiest Women poll (WebTrends).

Design & usability

FHM.com completely redesigned in December 2008. New features included:

• A tag-based navigation, allowing users to search and bookmark content
• An HD-ready video channel
• A members rewards system
• The ability to personalise the site

Since relaunch, the site is showing a rise in page impressions of approximately 40%, and dwell time up from an average duration of 7.6 minutes in March 08 to 9.4 minutes in Jan 09 (WebTrends).

Other Highlights

• Incoming, the FHM newswire which brings a global writing team under one hub for the first time
• Web Games, with 800 completely playable games embedded into the site, a market first. Average user time in this channel is now 21 minutes
• Girls now has a searchable archive of every FHM shoot available online. Readers can sign up for updates from favourite FHM covergirls from within their member’s area
• FHM’s social network for aspiring models had over 9000 active users by March 2009
• FHMTV is FHM's video archive, now in a continuous play, HD-capable portal. FHMTV has more than 1.5 million unique video plays per month, all owned or commissioned by FHM
• Plus a new premium area: The Manual – claiming 10% of FHM.com's entire traffic

David Mitchell's Soapbox on FHM TV

Commercial Results

Ad clients in major deals on the site for 2008 included Nivea, Adidas, O2, Ubisoft, Activision, Paramount, Fox, and United Pictures.

And for 2008, for the first time, FHM's daily turnover of content has been syndicated across the network of international sites from its London hub. FHM now has a significant web presence in Spain, Germany, France, India, Portugal and the US.

This has put FHM.com as a global digital property in 2008 comfortably in profit, a fantastic result, and a double-digit percentage rise in accumulated global revenue.

Judges Comments

“Bauer has transitioned the FHM brand successfully across video, social networking and community on and off the site, seeing fantastic growth in the judging year. The FHM.com team understands its audience, knows what it wants and gives it to them with both barrels.”

Contacts

Editor-in-Chief: Chris Mooney

Advertising queries: Richard McGrath
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