Crikey. Anything that involves the discussion of the BBC and money is likely to be contentious but this ads-on-the-website issue has people fuming. Our own Mark Sweney extracted some remarkable figures on potential income from an Accenture report commissioned by the BBC: within five years, the report predicts that ads on the BBC site could be generating £48 million, £64 million or £105 million, depending which level of advertising the BBC chooses. Why introduce ads on the BBC website? BBC content is funded by UK licence fee payers, but can be accessed for nothing by anyone in the world. The idea is that rather than charge for access to the website - which is extremely hard to pull off online - the BBC will introduce adverts on the site that only appear to users outside the UK.
When I spoke to Richard Sambrook in May, he said that between 30 to 50% of the BBC's web traffic is international and so that audience has to contribute to the cost of that content in some way. The BBC has the same issue as many online publishers - they have to work out how to get the audience to pay for content without losing most of the audience in the process, which would inevitably happen if a payment barrier was introduced. The difference with the BBC is that with four million users every day and a position as, arguably, the world's most powerful media brand, its launch into the commercial web advertising market could be devastating for its rivals.
The figures in the Accenture report weren't exactly denied by the BBC - Worldwide just confirmed it has developed financial forecasts for bbc.com - but it gives us a real indication of how brightly those dollar sign are burning in the eyes of BBC's executives.
"We're damned if we do and damned if we don't," Sambrook told me. "If we do it on a public service basis they say we are distorting the market and they want us to compete on a commercial basis. But if we do it on a commercial basis, they say we are taking advertising away. In the end we have to decide on policy terms what is right for us."
Perhaps most tellingly, BBC staff are the loudest protestors against this move, primarily concerned that the BBC's editorial quality and independence is under threat. More than 170 staff are backing a hefty anti-ads campaign, including some senior members of the BBC news team. One campaigner told me that the perception of putting ads on the site is so negative than even if editorial isn't unduly affected, it's still enormously damaging to the BBC's credibility.
Meanwhile, on Technorati, there's a sponsored link for the BBC America Shop gleefully plugging its merchandise: "Shop BBC America for merchandise; order now, and support your BBC..."
