Financial Times stresses important of Google AMP for its subscriptions

Financial Times/Flickr CC

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Robert Shrimsley, the Managing Editor of the Financial Times (FT), stressed the importance of Google's accelerated mobile pages (AMP) project in its distribution strategy during an interview with The Drum.

Google's AMP, which is seen as a direct response to Facebook's Instant Articles, is an open source initiative that lays out technical guidelines for publishers to follow that will load mobile pages almost instantaneously. However, unlike other off-platform distribution channels that the FT employs — like Facebook's Instant Articles and Apple's News app — AMP allows publishers to implement their paywalls into the technology. Thus, when a user clicks on an AMP powered search result from the FT, they are asked to log in to their subscription to view the content. 

AMP's integration with paywalls is a key differentiator from other mobile distribution products and particularly essential for publishers that rely heavily on subscription revenue. While both Facebook and Apple have expressed plans to incorporate paywalls with their products, neither currently have the technology in place.

However, the FT relies almost entirely on subscriptions for its digital revenue. While exclusions do apply (content over 30 days old and some breaking news), most digital content on the FT requires a subscription.

The fear is that if readers become too reliant on social platforms like Facebook to access content for free, they'll be less likely to dole out money for a digital subscription. Google's paywall integration can offset some of those concerns. Google is the second-largest referral source for publishers (behind Facebook), accounting for around 35% of total publisher referral traffic, according to data from Parsely.

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