One of the ways in which we monitor and measure our commercial practices is Net Positive Revenue (NPR). This is money that comes from commercial opportunities that help us stay true to our values, while also contributing to a financially viable future for the organisation. Overall, last year our NPR was 10% greater than in 2012-13. Examples of where this came from include newspaper advertising campaigns for alternative energy, a sponsorship deal that promoted ways to live more sustainably (see below), holidays in the UK and job advertising in the charitable sector.
A significant amount of NPR last year came from sponsorships, up 98% on the previous year. This was due, in part, to the launch of Guardian Labs. This is a new department that provides clients with innovative and creative ways in which to reach our audiences. One of the team's biggest successes to date is the Live Better campaign, in partnership with Unilever. The campaign encouraged people to take on challenges that would help them to lead a more sustainable life and make less of an adverse impact on the environment.
Sustainability coverage
The appetite for our coverage of sustainability and environmental issues continues to grow, both among our own readership and beyond: on average a Guardian reader talks to 2.38 people per week about an environment article, double the UK average for similar articles. Almost a third of our key audience, who we call 'progressives', say they want to read about environmental issues. Between them, the Guardian environment, global development and the Guardian sustainable business sites attract 6.7m unique browsers per month. That figure has increased by 55% from 2012-13. Nationally, we rank second to the BBC when it comes to the size of audience for environmental and sustainability coverage.
Another example of the appetite for sustainability content is the Guardian sustainable business smart phone interactive. This explores social and environmental impacts and it has received more than 50,000 hits so far.
Transparency
To make sure that we can clearly demonstrate that the lines between our editorial and commercial priorities don't get blurred, we have several safeguards in place. These safeguards are more important than ever, as the amount of sponsored content on the website and the paper is likely to increase, as we look at more ways in which to generate income:
Labelling: We did some research among our readers about the way we mark or signify commercial or sponsored content. We shared the findings with the Scott Trust and we are now working on a new labelling system, refined and streamlined from the previous version, which makes the nature of all of our content very clear. This system will be used on our website and all our mobile products.
Sponsored content guidelines: These guidelines have been updated to reflect the more complex requirements of putting content online. These are available for anyone to read.
Editorial partnership group: This is a team made up of Guardian News & Media's (GNM) managing editors and representatives from the Guardian Labs management team. Together, they review proposed sponsorship deals, to check that the partnership won't conflict with our core values.
Readers' survey: As part of our regular audience surveys, we ask people how they feel about how we run our business and the relationships we form with advertisers and corporations.
We also ask about transparency and openness in business decisions and, overall, in our most recent survey, 96% of respondents agreed this is important. That said, 66% of our online audience, and 75% of our paper audience, agreed that we are transparent. This is better than last year but there is still room for improvement.
Time and again the results show that our audience cares about the advertising on our platforms, and they expect us to show due diligence and consideration when exploring commercial opportunities. For more details see our latest readers' survey here.
Personal data
One of the ways we fund investment in our journalism is by using information about our audience to enable us to target advertising more effectively, and to make our own products and services more relevant to our readers. We know that our readers want and expect to feel secure about how we use their personal information
That is why, in autumn 2014, we plan to launch a simple, open and transparent statement about personal data and why it is important. This will explain to our readers why we collect data about them and how we use it in a responsible way. The statement will provide links to our privacy policy. This explains clearly how they can stay in control of the data they provide to us.
