Launching the FT Strategies' Data & Insights Practice: Our answer to improved data capabilities

Data and their insights enable better decision-making. When we realised one of our clients had an involuntary churn rate 16% higher than the industry average, we soon turned our attention to payment failure and helped them halve their churn rate. When we identified registered users converted to paid at 60x the rate of anonymous users for another client, we soon helped them build a smarter registration strategy. When we saw the decline of Facebook as a referral mechanism (down 21% in 2024), we told the industry to help them adapt their social strategies.

As you can tell from these examples, data, insights and research have always been a key part of our consulting services and the hundreds of client projects we have conducted since 2019. However, in the last two years, we have been increasing our investment in data science, data analytics, AI and research capabilities to provide more extensive and higher-value support to our news and publishing clients. The culmination of that investment is today’s official launch of the FT Strategies’ Data and Insights Practice. 

This new practice, led by our Managing Director Jo Levesque, offers a range of services to clients, including:

• Data Implementation Services - We support organisations in assessing and upgrading their data capabilities to unlock efficiencies, improve long-term audience understanding, and optimise monetisation models. For example, we helped a leading Italian news media organisation build a propensity-to-churn model that outperformed its subscription management platform.
• Bespoke Research - We support organisations in understanding wider market and industry trends by conducting qualitative and quantitative research studies — and providing access to proprietary benchmarks. For example, we authored “Next Gen News” - a highly referenced research project that examined the future of news consumption in 2030.
• Data Analytics and Benchmarking - We support organisations in understanding their performance relative to the market - whether that is audience reach and engagement, digital subscription performance, overall financial performance or tech & data capabilities. We then help them build an action plan for how they can address gaps in performance. For example, we helped El Mundo (Spain’s second-largest news organisation) to benchmark its subscription pricing against its competitors to optimise its pricing strategy. This work was part of a longer partnership with El Mundo where we have helped them to grow their subscription base by tens of thousands of new subscribers.
• Thought Leadership - We support organisations targeting the media industry to grow their sales pipeline through the creation and distribution of original thought leadership. For example, we have a three-year partnership with subscription technology fintech Minna Technologies to help them pivot their strategy and reach over 547 high-quality leads spanning fintech, banking and OTT service providers.
  
  

  An example of our data analytics work:

There are a few reasons why we feel we are well-placed to provide these services:

1. Our team members are news and publishing experts with the majority of us coming from the industry (including FT, BBC, WSJ, Guardian, News Corp, The Economist, HuffPost) and some of our Data specialists can bring in hands-on experience from wider industries as well
2. We have worked with hundreds of news and publishing businesses across the world and can therefore effectively benchmark performance against competitors
3. We are very comfortable with technical implementation - our team writes code and builds tools on behalf of clients if needed

The practice is made up of a team of experts in data, analytics and research:

• Emanuele Porfiri is Head of Analytics and supports our data-led projects, from building and developing engagement metrics and tactics to measuring and tackling churn. He previously worked in Web, Customer and Marketing analytics across the Arts, Retail, Media and Financial sectors.
• George Montagu is Head of Insights and oversees all of our research projects at FT Strategies. He was the project lead and lead author of the Next Gen News research project and The News Sustainability Project. In addition, George was responsible for developing the FT’s first-party data and registration strategy in 2020.
• Sarah Dear is a Senior Data Analyst, leading data-focused projects including newsroom analytics, content strategy and product pricing. She has also collaborated closely with the FT newsroom and analytics team and previously worked at HuffPost and the Guardian.
• Lamberto Lambertini is a Senior Insights Consultant, supporting all original FTS research projects and leading thought leadership on newsroom transformation and paywall models. Prior to joining, he worked at Enders Analysis, a media research firm, writing about the transformation of the UK publishing industry towards reader-revenue models.
• Fiona Kim is a Senior Data Analyst at FT Strategies with previous data analysis experience working in consulting and tech. She holds a PhD in Applied Statistics, specialising in statistical modelling and natural language processing.
• Breck Wills is a manager specialising in data and financial modelling, leading projects that drive revenue strategy and audience insights. Previously, as a data scientist at The Wall Street Journal, she worked on optimising their subscription strategy through dynamic paywall changes and pricing models.
• Liat Fainman-Adelman is an engagement manager and a lead researcher currently completing a Masters at UCL on the impact of social media and AI on young people. Liat also runs a weekly newsletter - Doomscrollers - exploring Gen Z attitudes and behaviors online, powered by insights from hundreds of 13 to 27-year-olds worldwide.
• Ines Luque is an Associate Consultant with experience in data-rich projects, including financial modelling and survey design. She has researched workplace diversity and inclusion and holds an MSci in Management Science from UCL, where she focused on data analysis and programming in R and Python. 

At FT Strategies, we have extensive expertise in data, analytics and research, helping organisations make smarter, more informed decisions. If you would like to learn more about our Data & Insights Practice, please get in touch.

---

About the authors

George Montagu, Head of Insights

George is Head of Insights at FT Strategies. Before this, he has spent the last four years guiding the FT’s data strategy as it balances revenue and risk. Most recently, he founded and continues to lead a cross-departmental FT team focused on the future of marketing & advertising in the context of restrictions on online tracking.

 

Emanuele Porfiri, Head of Analytics

 

Emanuele is Head of Analytics at FT Strategies and has worked with clients in developing engagement metrics, building data architectures and conducting business analyses and insights. He previously spent seven years at Realised UNLIMITED, a boutique analytics consultancy.