The FT forges on with paid content
Jinfo Blog

7th September 2010

By Penny Crossland

Item

While the debate over the rights or wrongs of paywalls in the newspaper industry continues, the Financial Times has quietly been expanding its niche paid-for sites using its well-established access model. Paidcontent (http://digbig.com/5bchdf ) alerted us to the launch of the FT’s SchemeXpert site ( https://www.schemexpert.com/ ) , a pensions intelligence platform with aggregated content from FT Group publications. The site is aimed at pensions executives with risk management and governance remits. As with other FT sites, registered users are allowed five free articles, with full access only available with a subscription. SchemeXpert.com joins four other FT sites aimed at business and financial executives and business intelligence professionals. China Confidential, (http://www.ftchinaconfidential.com/) launched in 2009 is a research service providing analysis and forecasts on all topics of interest to China investors. This site is to be joined by China Confidential Funds (http://www.ftchinaconfidential.com/fundsholdingpage) later this month. It will concentrate on the Chinese fund industry. Between 2008 and early this year, the FT acquired three financial information providers in: Money Media (http://www.money-media.com/) specializes in competitive intelligence on money management issues, MandateWire (http://www.mandatewire.com) provides sales intelligence and market data for the institutional investment market and Medley Global Advisors (http://www.medleyadvisors.com/ ) is a policy intelligence service for investment bankers. Another site, FT Tilt, content of which is as yet unknown, is due to be launched later this year(http://digbig.com/5bchdg). The Financial Times clearly believes that paid content is the way forward, now that its subscription-based model has proven itself. The FT’s editor, Rob Grimshaw has always maintained that relying on an ad supported business model is too much of a risk for publishers. In an interview with Computing Magazine(http://digbig.com/5bchd) , Grimshaw points out that advertisers spread their budgets thinly across various media, and in fact spend a small proportion on media websites. Interestingly, The FT’s editor, like Rupert Murdoch believes the iPad could well be the saviour for newspapers. The launch of the FT iPad app in the US this year was a great success, with more than 100,000 downloads in the first two weeks. Not bad for a site with 135,000 subscribers. For more Livewire postings on the subject see (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e30424, http://www.vivavip.com/go/e27740 and http://www.vivavip.com/go/e30216)

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