The commercial charter pledges to uphold clearly-defined standards around customer service, viewability, non-human traffic, brand safety, third-party verification, reporting, pricing and more.
Following recent exposure of errors and malpractice in the placement, measurement and pricing of digital advertising elsewhere in the industry, the FT has taken this step to publicly define how it transacts with advertisers and promote transparent practices more widely.
Jon Slade, Chief Commercial Officer, said: “For our commercial partners, the FT has always stood for elusive audiences, unrivalled data, genuine understanding of our clients’ businesses and high-quality advertising solutions. Mirroring the values of our journalism, we also take great pride in standing for trust in our commercial relationships. There is a real danger that all digital advertising is going to be tarred with the same brush and dragged down by unscrupulous players and bad practices. This is not in the interests of advertisers, publishers or readers.”
Last July, the FT also published a reader charter, which makes a series of promises to readers about how they’ll experience advertising when reading the FT, with explicit commitments around the themes of trust, privacy and user experience.
Slade continued: “We see these two charters as key to maintaining the relationship of trust which we have built with both our audience and our advertising clients over our 129 year history.”
