Next month will bring the launch of a new quarterly tech-investment magazine into The Australian Financial Review, being produced directly by PR agency PPR.

According to Telum (a media news alert aimed at PRs), the new 36-page “investor focussed” TechInvest mag will:

“… focus on the Australasian technology market, from an investor perspective. It will cover stories on ASX listed companies, start-ups, incubators, accelerators and the wider technology ecosystem, as well as providing a forum for app and product reviews. There will be free editorial opportunities, however they will be supplemented by paid-for advertorial content. The publication will be inserted in to more than 65,000 copies of the AFR as well as distributed directly to more than 1,000 institutional fund managers, brokers, analysts, retail investors and key technology and business media in Australia.”

It’s not the first time Fairfax has outsourced journalism to others. We wondered, is this new insert to work like the company’s Drive supplement (since the start of the year supplied by a joint venture the car website Motor Report), or like it’s China Watch supplement (funded and supplied by the Chinese government). We asked, and were told it was an “advertising insert”, so more like China Watch.

Who’s responsible for the content in TechInvest? PR firm PPR, owned by British advertising and PR behemoth WWP (whose subsidiaries include Group M, Ogilvy and plenty of others). PPR counts among its Australian clients many of Australia’s biggest tech firms. Now it’ll be writing a magazine targeted at investors in such firms, handily distributed to the AFR‘s readership. Think of the synergies. — Myriam Robin