Online display ads account for 41% of the income for the UK Association of Online Publishers members. Paid content accounted for 18% of their online income.


Online display ads account for 41% of the income for the UK Association of Online Publishers members. Paid content accounted for 18% of their online income.

Among paid content, 78% was for subscriptions, 22% for one-off and 9% for sponsorships.

The study also revealed that year-over-year turnover for an average AOP member has increased 53%.

44% of AOP’s business-to-business members charge for online content and 34% focused on consumer publishing.

43% said that they are not likely to start charging for online content, compared to 30% in 2005 and 18% in 2004.

Over 37% of members charging for online content earned ₤1 million revenue in 2005 for paid content. 26% earned over ₤5 million for the same.

75% said part of their revenue comes from overseas markets, 10% said more than 50% of their revenue is from overseas markets.

Bill Murray, Chairman and MD of UK AOP, said: “While there remains a strong view from consumers that web content must be free, the healthy online ad market has probably convinced most publishers that there’s little point in sacrificing valuable ad inventory in trying to convert consumers to paying.

However, I suspect that within the B2B market and with some of the more interactive, high-value consumer content enabled by broadband, we will see long term growth in the number of publishers charging for the best content.” [Source]