A report yesterday from PricewaterhouseCoopers found that online ad revenue is on the verge of surpassing print ads – an inspiring milestone for new media and convergence. However, the PwC survey was based on combined figures across all online media outlets; are individual news outlets having success detaching themselves from the traditional print ad revenue addiction? The Financial Times , London’s version of the Wall Street Journal , says it has leveraged its niche market and will see print ad revenues dip below direct payments made to the paper this year, according to the Los Angeles Times . Sponsor So what does “direct payment” mean in this case? For the Financial Times, it means subscriptions to its print circulation – which costs readers roughly £235 ($348 U.S.) for a year’s subscription – and for access to the paper’s content online at a price of around £125 ($186 U.S.). But the newspaper has created alternative sources of revenue as well, including iPhone and iPad applications and a series of glitzy events and conferences drawing luminaries from various industries. Earlier this month, we mentioned that the Financial Times had reached 130,000 downloads of its free iPad application in its first two weeks. The app is being downloaded nearly ten times faster than its iPhone companion, which launched last year but required an online subscription to use. All this just from the U.S. launch of the app; the U.K. version has yet to be released into the AppStore. The faster pace of downloads is likely due to the fact that the app is free, and provides access to the Financial Times content that is normally behind subscriptions. The newspaper is running a two-month sponsorship to fund the app and grow its popularity, and will likely switch to a monthly subscription model soon. One reason why a digital subscription via the iPad is likely to succeed for the Financial Times is because much of the readership of the paper (like that of the Wall Street Journal) is mainly wealthy financiers and business executives – just the type of audience that’s likely to subscribe and more likely to own the expensive iPad. According to the Los Angeles Times story , the paper estimates that by 2012 a full third of its revenue will come from its digital efforts. As with the report regarding online ad revenues from yesterday, this news from the Financial Times is very encouraging for the online media industry. But the Financial Times is leveraging its upper-class audience in other ways as well. According to the Los Angeles Times, the paper hosts events and conferences aimed at these high-rollers. At the forefront of these events is the Business of Luxury Summit, which has become a strong source of profit for the paper thanks to high-end sponsorships and expensive registration prices, with executives from companies like Estee Lauder, Calvin Klein and Jimmy Choo drawing in the wealthy attendees. The ability of traditional news outlets to break their dependence on print ad revenues is certainly a welcome change and a good sign that the industry can in fact survive at a healthy level online. The Financial Times, however, may be a poor example since they have a significantly different audience – one that may be more willing to pay for an online subscription. Discuss

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Google Analytics has quickly become a very popular Web analytics tool for publishers who want to learn more about their visitors. Not every user, however, is comfortable with the idea of giving even more data to Google and these publishers. Today, Google released the beta version of a browser plugin that allows users to opt-out of Google Analytics tracking. The plugin is available for Internet Explorer (versions 7 and 8), Google Chrome (4 and higher), and Mozilla Firefox (3.5 and higher). Sponsor Installing the tool is as easy as heading over to the site and installing the browser plugin. After this, your visits to sites that use Google Analytics will not be registered by Google Analytics and website owners won’t see your visit in their stats. Even though your visit won’t appear in Google Analytics, it is worth noting that the Web server’s logs will still show that you visited the site. Google now also gives publishers the ability to provide their visitors with an extra level of privacy . Publishers can now choose to anonymize IP addresses sent to Google, so that a user’s exact geographic location (which the IP address often reveals), will remain hidden. Do You Care Enough to Opt Out? Google promised to release this tool about two months ago . For publishers, this is obviously not an ideal situation, as they rely on accurate statistics to manage their sites and tweak their marketing efforts. But it remains to be seen how many users will actually install this plugin. According to Google spokesman Brian Richardson, who spoke to the Los Angeles Times earlier today, only one in 15 visitors to Google’s Ads Preferences Manager actually decides to opt out of the personalized advertising program. Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village Discuss

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The Los Angeles Times reports that Hulu , the online television site, is going to start requiring payment for some of its programming beginning May 24. The five most recent episodes of current shows would still be available for free. But to see anything more would require membership in its Hulu Plus program, which costs $9.99 per month. Sponsor Hulu has reported profit in its last two quarters, bringing in $100 million. If it were an independent company, that might be thought quite impressive. But Hulu is owned by Disney, NewsCorp and NBC Universal. Those companies have rather larger expectations. ReadWriteWeb reported last week that Hulu’s numbers indicate a slowing and plateauing of the company’s growth. Hulu Plus would add an additional revenue stream that would augment its advertising. What remains to be seen is whether the charges stimulate revenue or inspire users to seek free content elsewhere. Discuss

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It’s been nearly a year since China first shutdown access to Twitter in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre , but today Google has opened up the doors again, in a way. According to an article this morning in the Los Angeles Times, Google has added Twitter search results to its search engine there, “in effect, lifting a nine-month blackout of the microblogging service in China.” Sponsor Earlier this week, Google announced that it would stop censoring search results and would redirect visitors from mainland China to Google.com.hk from Google.cn. Already, China has worked to censor search results provided on Google.com.hk. This latest move by Google is sure to further aggravate an already tense situation, but we have to wonder, as we have before , if it really matters or if we’re looking at it from an ethnocentric point of view. Twitter may have been blocked, but China has several of its own Chinese Twitter clones . So now China can see tweets, which are predominantly not in Mandarin, in Google search results. Then again, the Los Angeles Times points out that the search results are already bringing sensitive topics into view of Chinese citizens: The tweets do not show up for all searches, but only for terms that appear to be popular on Twitter. On Thursday morning, that included discussions on such taboo subjects as how to circumvent China’s Internet firewall, why Google decided to exit China and a vaccine scandal unfolding in central China. The move seems more like a principled slap in the face than anything else. But then again, so does much of this situation. Discuss

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Facebook may be denying any wrongdoing, but a California judge is disagreeing with the social networks’ disagreement to the tune of a $9.5 million dollar settlement today. The Los Angeles Times reports that the settlement comes in response to a class-action lawsuit over Facebook’s Beacon program that published what users were buying. Sponsor The decision allocates $6 million of the settlement to a “digital trust fund” that will go to organizations that study online privacy, says the Times article. The Times explains the bit of controversy hovering around this final decision: Over the objections of privacy advocates, Facebook will have a seat on the fund’s three-member board. It consists of Chris Jay Hoofnagle, who heads the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology; Tim Sparapani, Facebook’s public policy director; and writer Larry Magid. While some people are saying that the settlement is unfair in a few ways, Justin Brookman, a senior resident fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, seemed to disagree. The general contention has been that Facebook will have one seat on the three-member board for the “digital trust fund” and that it was already required to pay money out to promote online privacy, as our own Sarah Perez discussed when the settlement was first announced last October. Brookman said that today’s decision is “a really good settlement for consumers”, explaining that “there are really very few settlements that come up with that type of monetary figure.” He also contended that, while Facebook will have a seat on the board, it will be a minority member, as a majority vote requires two out of the three parties to agree. He said that the other two members, Hoofnagle and Magid, were both good choices who will act in the public’s interest. “We have a lot of confidence they’ll make wise awards of the money,” he said. “They both criticized Facebook when Beacon came out.” According to the Times, however, this may not be the end of the appeal process. One privacy advocate said he was exploring whether he could appeal the decision. “This sweetheart deal for Facebook is outrageous and another indication they don’t really want to ensure privacy online,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. Brookman noted, however, that a settlement like this for privacy issues was relatively unprecedented. Discuss

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