Web Ad Rates Based on Time, Not Clicks

In 2014 digital subscriptions to the Financial Times grew 21 percent, more than twice the rate of overall circulation, and the digital audience accounted for 70 percent of paying readers. Still, the salmon-colored business newspaper faces the same problem as all publications: Print ad rates are far higher than digital ones. But FT Group Chief Executive Officer John Ridding says its secret weapon is audience engagement. “Our audience is not just growing,” he told shareholders on Feb. 27. “People are spending more time with the FT and consuming more content.” To take fuller advantage of those eyeballs, the paper’s website has started to change the way it sells ads.

The FT is the first major publication to try charging advertisers based on how long readers spend looking at a screen where their ads are displayed, rather than on how many times they click on the Web pages where the ads appear. Online data analytics companies argue that the conventional system of clicks inevitably favors websites that can get readers to click without inducing them to read long enough to register ads. “What matters is the amount of time that an ad is in front of someone’s face,” says Tony Haile, CEO of analytics firm Chartbeat, which is working with the FT to test the time-viewed model.