Not enough clicks in the world

Back to the serious stuff. FT.com publisher Robert Grimshaw has been explaining to Paid Content why others, beyond the Wall Street Journal and News International, are looking at subscription and micropayments to keep their online services going.

"We’ve done the sums - it’s really difficult to see how an advertising-only business can stack up unless you’ve got enormous volume...... If you’re aiming to make $50 million a year from your online advertising business, which is not massive, you’re going to need 833 million page impressions per month at CPMs of $5 a time. If they drop to a dollar, you need 4.1 billion. There are hardly any websites that have anywhere near that volume and few can aspire to it - you’re going to need some other way to make money other than adverts.”