FT says it will be primarily digital experience by next Olympics

The Financial Times expects to be primarily a digital mobile experience by the time of the next Olympics, according to FT.com’s leader, Rob Grimshaw.

Arif Durrani of MediaWeek writes, “Mobile already accounts for 25% of FT.com’s traffic and is said to be driving between 15%-20% of all new subscriptions, where iPad users lead the charge. Grimshaw suggests there is potential to grow this over the next year, when the brand will be celebrating an incredible 125 year milestone.

“He says: ‘I don’t think we have fully optimised the experience yet. It still involves putting in credit card details and addresses and such. Someone buying a sub on a mobile device is not a trivial thing, so we’ve been surprised to see so much coming through so quickly.

“‘But we also see it on the usage side of things as well, so if you look at subscribers as a core audience, 30% of their pages views now are coming on mobile devices which is huge. Even if you look at the [user] base as a whole [including non subscribers], it’s over 20% now.’

“The FT’s success in attracting paying digital subscribers made industry headlines this summer, after digital surpassed the 299,000 print subscribers for the first time. Two weeks ago, in the publisher’s latest update, digital subscribers had reached 313,000 in September, up 26% year on year, cementing the brand’s position as a digitally driven operation. It helped lift FT Group sales by 7% for the first nine months of 2012, despite the challenging ad market.”

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