@We Media: Ads On The BBC Are Nothing New: "‘We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t,’ said Richard Sambrook, BBC’s director of global news, on the proposals to introduce adverts to BBC.co.uk for non-UK users. Overseas users now represent between 30 and 50 per cent of traffic to BBC.co.uk but it is funded by a licence fee paid by the British public.
Sambrook told paidContent: ‘If we do it on a public service basis they say we’re taking all the traffic and distorting the market, and they would prefer us to compete on a commercial basis, but if we want to compete on a commercial basis they say we are taking ads away from them.’
Overseas users would be identified by their IP address (a system that the BBC says is 99.9 per cent reliable) and routed through to a payment page. Most of the cost for the BBC is in streaming video, although overseas users already get a lower resolution ‘flick book’ version of video clips.
Asha Oberoi’s comments to me yesterday (she’s a former BBC senior broadband producer, former PA multimedia head and is now at The Telegraph) are typical of those concerns among the BBC’s rivals in the UK. Though the plans are for users outside the UK, she said there’s still a limited pool of advertising that the BBC would muscle in on. She thinks the BBC is blinded by the flashing dollar signs, because profit from the commercial international operation would be ploughed back into the UK site.
Disgruntled bloggers at ‘the meeting at the docks’ last night were adamant that adverts would compromise the BBC’s content. Sambrook said ads aren’t new to the BBC; its commercial international TV services are already ad-funded so this is ‘not breaking new ground’. He said editorial is entirely separate from the political relationships and commercial operations and added that the Middle East service is a good example of how an audience can trust an ad-funded site more because it is not dependent on government funding. ‘We have ads on the BBC’s commercial TV channels and I don’t think anyone thinks they affect our editorial standards, quality or principles.’
The introduction of advertising for overseas users wouldn’t be subject to the BBC’s market impact tests as they apply for UK services. Sambrook said the decision will be made by the BBC’s executive directors and board of governors in the next few months and, if agreed, ads could be in place by the end of the year.
Several challenges to implementing this, not least the bypassing of the geo-IP system by using a British friend’s virtual PC software…
(Via paidContent.org.)