AOP Summit: Charging for online content is necessary to move forward

Charging for online content is vital for commercial media, said Luke Bradley-Jones, executive vice-president and managing director of BBC.com, at yesterday’s AOP Summit.

In a session on paid-content, Bradley-Jones said that although both paid-for and ad-funded business models could work, charging for content is logical and a “necessity to move forward”.

He also named mobile and affiliate communications as areas with strong potential for growing revenues over the coming years.

Fellow panellist Rob Grimshaw, MD of FT.com, was more emphatic about the importance of charging for content. “I can’t see how it’s possible to make the pure advertising model work unless you have enormous scale. Publishers have to find other ways of making money.”

He added that the FT is looking at new pricing models and features for its website, which it hopes to introduce in 2010.

Last week, the AOP published research showing that 70% of digital publishers are expected to implement paid-for models for online content.