Pocklington joins the FT from Pearson, where he was director of strategy. In his new role, he will be directly responsible for all aspects of 's commercial performance and development.
The commercial director's job has been vacant since last June when Claire Payne replaced David Walsh, who moved to the short-lived position of worldwide advertisement director, as UK ad director on the Financial Times.
Walsh and Payne have both since left -- Walsh to lead the sales operation of The Business and Payne to take up a new position at the Associated-owned free ads paper Loot.
Pocklington will work closely with Tracy Corrigan, the editor of FT.com, and will help ensure that the subscription website continues to deliver editorially and technologically.
Zach Leonard, FT.com managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, commented: "Nigel brings a powerful combination of strategic vision and strong commercial acumen and he'll be a great asset to the team as we lead FT.com to the next stage of its development."
FT.com was named as the UK's leading newspaper website this week by the influential British Business Survey, and its traffic figures are an at all-time high with 3.8m unique monthly users and more than 65m page views.
The FT site was relaunched in May 2002 as a subscription website and has attracted more than 57,000 subscribers, which helped it break even as a business in December 2002.
Last month, the site won the best investigative reporting category at the 2003 NetMedia European Online Journalism Awards for its special report on weapons of mass destruction.
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