“The impact of advertising revenue declines was partly mitigated by growth in content revenues and the resilience of our subscription businesses,” says Pearson in its earnings today.

In the last decade, FT Group has slimmed advertising from 52 percent of its income mix to 19 percent, and editor Lionel Barber CEO John Ridding reckons direct content income will overtake that from ads by 2012.

But that’s partly because FT Group is busy augmenting the paper with specialist subscription-data acquisitions - and partly because, like everyone, FT still runs ads. Says Pearson: “We do not see the advertising cycle turning any time soon; but we do expect the FT Group’s high-quality information and analysis to remain in demand and its subscription businesses to remain resilient.”

Online is, indeed, on the up…
—Paying web subs are up 15 percent to 126,000.
—Freely-registered users are up by 85 percent to 1.8 million, presenting an opportunity to show them targeted ads.
—The iPhone app got 200,000 downloads since launching in July.

But, in print, the group will be worried by slow progress overseas. Print circulation was only “broadly level”. Global circulation is down seven percent (to 402,799). Sales at home in the UK make up over 90 percent of the total, but are themselves down by 23 percent from their February 2001 decade high.

Across Pearson…

—Operating profit up four percent to £858 million on four percent higher income.
—Digital products now make up 31 percent of Pearson income (£1.7 billion).
—Penguin profit dipped 10 percent after spending £9 million on restructuring for digital publishing. E-book sales grew fourfold.

Release