The FT has scored an editorial hit with its new mobile site, but what does the commercial side of the business make of it?
The FT’s Rob Grimshaw is right, FT users really could do with a quick way of checking the latest FT news and stock prices on the go (and on, specifically, their Blackberrys and iPhones). And the site delivers. Clean, simple, clear, FT ‘pink’, and all you really need or care about when you’re on the move.
But, the insight into how this new investment will be paid for is also interesting. First, there’s no apparent room made available for served banner advertising. So, while Grimshaw says clients are expressing interest in “sponsorship opportunities” it seems that is indeed what they’ll get, the fixed period ‘tenancies’ of web 0.5.
Also, there are new prompts for users to subscribe to the full FT experience, for example, to be able to customise the stock prices they see, driving, hopefully, the core business.
For the commercial teams inside the FT, this is all a much cleaner way to go about things than they had to get used to on the web.
The sell to media agencies, for example, is very straightforward. Reach this many people of this particular type for this period of time. It’s a clean sell that speaks well to press buyers, rather than the digital departments for whom mobile banners are likely to make even less sense than on the web. It also allows the FT to go after slightly younger AB1 brands since it can reasonably argue that the mobile site delivers a significantly younger audience than the paper.
Things bode well but what we won’t know for quite a while is whether it will make its money back or, God help us, make a profit. If it does, the FT can reasonably claim to be one of the few traditional publisher brands to have successfully navigated the digital storm. If it doesn’t, it’s back in the whirlpool.
