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Wednesday 26th April 2006

BBC to poll overseas visitors on site ads 10:38AM, Wednesday 26th April 2006

The BBC is to conduct a poll among overseas visitors to its website to ask whether international versions of the site should carry advertising. The BBC says that approximately a third of the 3.5 million visitors to the bbc.co.uk site every day come from overseas.

The BBC will ask 100,000 of the overseas visitors to the site to take part in the survey.

UK visitors to the BBC sites will not be asked to take part in the survey as they will continue to receive advertising-free versions of the site as part of the licence fee, which is paid by almost all households in the UK.

Although BBC Television and Radio have always been free of advertising as part of the corporation's public service remit, this has not stopped the organisation taking the commercial route to supplement its income outside of the UK. This ranges from selling programmes like The Office to foreign broadcasters or through advertising on broadcasts of the BBC World television news channel.

The Corporation has already mocked up some versions of its site with banners and other ad slots familiar to visitors to other commercial web sites. However, before any decision is implemented it would have to go through the BBC's approval process.

Steve Malone

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