BBC Adds up the Ads

The British Broadcasting Corporation figures there’s some serious money to be made adding adverts to their web site.

The corporation estimates that it could earn between £48m and £105m annually in advertising revenues, depending on how aggressively the advertising were to be placed.

BBC executives must be rubbing their hands together at the prospect of so much extra income. However, they will have to balance the advertising revenue against the huge protests its UK rivals will undoubtedly make, and against internal opposition.

(full story here)

Here in Canada, CBC.CA had gone for years with no advertising on it’s news pages. That all changed 2 years ago with an aggressive sell of banners above the title and on the right side bar.

Lately those ‘above title’ banners have only occasionally been sold, mostly the inventory is promotional for the fall TV season or CBC’s uninspired 1995-era kids web site.