What's the FT's advertising Policy?

Our Promise

Trusted, original, global journalism is expensive to produce. At the Financial Times we use a mixture of advertising and subscription revenue to fund the quality news, comment and analysis for which we are known. However, we recognize that as a premium, subscription site we need to get the balance right and therefore prioritise our readers’ experience. We already take measures to protect our readers’ privacy and ensure their experience on FT.com is not adversely affected by advertising.

This Advertising Charter for readers sets out our commitments in the areas of trust, privacy and user experience across desktop and mobile. We will continue to work with all of our advertisers to make sure we only serve the highest quality advertising on FT.com and we welcome feedback from our readers.

Trust

Trust is of crucial importance when considering the relationship between readers, publishers and advertisers. Our journalism has always been, and will always remain, independent and free from commercial influence.

Where our journalism is funded (such as in an FT Special Report), whilst advertisers may have had a role in suggesting the broad topic or theme, they have no influence over or prior sight of the journalism produced.

Content from commercial clients is not produced by FT editorial staff and is always clearly defined and labelled. In the newspaper with the title “ADVERTISEMENT” and different typeface and colours; 

On FT.com with a “Paid Post” banner and explanatory disclaimer;
On howtospendit.com with a “Sponsored” banner.
Our Advertising Charter and other advertising policies are always readily available.

Privacy

The FT commits to ensuring that the use of personal data is appropriate, controlled, and that the data itself is kept secure. Personal data is held and transferred securely and we comply with all related guidance and standards. Individual personal data is never passed to advertisers or other third parties without a user’s agreement.

The FT does not target readers on behalf of our advertising clients when they are visiting other websites on the basis of data that identifies them individually. The FT’s privacy policy and managing cookies pages will explain how we use cookies to serve advertisements that are relevant to our readers’ interests based on what they have read on FT.com and other Financial Times websites.

Our advertising terms and conditions will restrict advertisers to using cookies for analysing impressions and campaign performance only, and not for other purposes including building user profiles.

User Experience

The FT commits to ensuring that advertising never obscures our journalism, interferes with a reader’s experience or disrupts the use of any of our platforms. Reader experience will always take priority over advertising revenue. 

As part of that, the FT continually strives to improve the download speed and responsiveness of web pages across all devices, including monitoring the impact of advertising.

Advertising never overlays our journalism via animation or pop up.
Advertising never moves or changes the layout of the page, for example by inserting video content within article text.
Advertising will not interrupt a reader’s experience on FT.com through noise. Animation is also restricted.
Where video appears outside the video player, for example on article or section pages, the content only plays when the user requests it.
The Editor of FT.com has a right of veto over any advertising that appears on FT.com