The online strategy of the Financial Times

Ian Burrell of The Drum writes about the online strategy of the Financial Times.

Burrell writes, “From the early days of online journalism, the FT has been regarded as a model to admire and learn from. But in April 2015 it abandoned its former metered strategy (allowing a set number of articles for free before asking for a subscription) in favour of £1 monthly trials. Shrimsley compared the metered model – which allowed too many users to resist buying a sub – to ‘opening a bed shop and people were living in it – at some point you actually want them to buy the bed’. Monthly trialling has proved more effective in converting what the FT terms ‘prospects’ into paid subscribers.

“The paper promotes itself online by allowing free access to some articles over 30 days old (such as explainer pieces on the EU referendum). It gives ‘one-click-free’ direct access to those arriving on FT.com from Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Reddit, and seeds free content on news-based platforms Facebook Articles, Google Accelerated Mobile Mages (AMP) and Apple News to allow new audiences to taste its wares.

“For all this, the FT remains wary of giving away too much content on social and undermining its subscription model. ‘No publisher, the FT included, has figured out the extent to which distributed content is bringing them incremental value to their business,’ Slade admits. ‘Without any question the opportunity to reach the audience is profound – whether that comes at too high a price when you are ceding both distribution and monetisation to another platform remains to be seen.'”

Read more here.