The latest result of the BE: Europe survey, which found that 69,554 of Europe’s business elite read the Financial Times ever day, is further evidence that our customers are willing to pay for quality content and journalism.
Through our investment in editorial operations and increasing access to some of the world’s most powerful leaders, we can offer our readers global stories with expert local content, strengthening our global position. The Financial Times now has dedicated editions for the UK, Continental Europe, Asia, US and the Middle East and is printed in 24 cities across the world.
The FT's strategy is to be channel-neutral, providing our journalism to readers and subscribers across any format and device they want, including print and online, mobile and other hand-held devices such as the iPad. The increasing consumer demand for digital formats is supported by the growing digital subscriptions, which are up 50% year on year to 189,022.
However, while our online readership is accelerating, we feel there is a very robust and healthy future for print that will run alongside the rise of digital distribution and digital devices. Print remains a core medium for the FT and we have seen our print readership grow alongside the digital readership.
Our advertising revenues returned to growth in the first half of 2010, with luxury advertising in particularly doing very well. With this in mind, readership surveys such as BE: Europe are highly valuable to us as they prove to our clients that the FT reaches a highly elusive and affluent audience, not just healthy circulation figures.
Although we have been able to sustain growth in advertising revenues, the outlook for newspaper models based solely on advertising across the industry remains uncertain. In 2002, almost 85 per cent of our revenue came from print advertising, whereas presently it only accounts for around 40 per cent. This is why we now deliver outstanding and award-winning advertising solutions across all platforms and constantly look for ways to develop new revenue streams.
