Here’s a surprising tidbit of information. What’s the mostly heavily read site for business news? Could it be www.Forbes.com? How do they do it? Everything’s free. Are they successful? Rumor has it their online ad revenues will be greater than their print revenues within two years. But where are the numbers for Business Week?

AdAge.com: Forbes.com’s Internet Audience-Building Secret by Jonah Bloom

ComScore Networks’ global visitor numbers tell the story. In 2002, WSJ.com was averaging around 1 million unique visitors a month, FT.com 1.3 million, Fortune.com 1.7 million and Forbes.com, 1.7 million. Three years on and WSJ.com is averaging around 3.3 million unique visitors; FT.com, which gated much of its content in mid-2002, is around 1.8 million; Fortune.com, which allows viewers to see a little free content before shuttling them to a subs sign-up form, averages 1.3 million. And Forbes.com? It’s at about 7.8 million.

Of course there’s more to marketing than reach, but big numbers are still the big draw. Marketers are showing a voracious appetite for online inventory and eyeballs — indeed for any alternative to broadcast TV — and are starting to embrace the mass targetability and measurability of a Web audience. In that situation, which site would you like to own?

Defending old business
WSJ and FT run great sites (they sap my funds every month). But their pay-to-play models smack of defending the old business, not embracing the new.