Thursday, June 30, 2016

Brexit Boosts Subscriptions to Financial Times and Gives Guardian Website ‘Biggest Ever Traffic Day’

"The End Of The World Will Be Good For Pageviews"

That's the wisdom of the Washington Post's Joel Achenbach in a 2008 column, "World War Five" and last seen here a week ago.

From the Press-Gazette:
The Brexit vote gave the Guardian its “biggest traffic day ever in all regions” and drove digital subscriptions to the Financial Times up by 600 per cent.

The result of the EU referendum on Friday might have left the political elite in turmoil but it was a boon to publications that devoted coverage to the historic decision.

There were more than 17m unique visitors to theguardian.com on 24 June, almost 3m higher than the previous largest recorded number, and 77m page views.

Meanwhile at the FT, thanks to a targeted marketing plan that included dropping its paywall for 24 hours on polling day last week, digital subscriptions were said to be up 600 per over the course of the weekend (compared to an average weekend).

Speaking to Digiday, the FT’s chief commercial officer Jon Slade said: “We dialled up our marketing on a real-time basis. We were looking at buying patterns, opportunities in social, and spending our marketing budgets in pretty aggressive ways in an attempt to try and dominate a story.”...MORE