Centaur Media
Delivering industry-leading analytics capabilities
The Guardian’s ability to know their visitors, treat them as individuals, and organise database marketing for maximal return plays a big role in keeping the publication profitable. It’s a story years in the making.
The Project
- Consultancy - Organising data, finding insight & targeting prospects and customers
TAP CXM contributed data management expertise in the early phases of the project, helping The Guardian to orientate towards reader-centricity.
The backstory
In 2017, advertising revenue was diluting around the online media landscape like ink in water. Subscriptions were in freefall as readership moved online, and GDPR restrictions loomed large. More publications every day were implementing paywalls to keep afloat.
But not the Guardian. They remained – and remain – “available for everyone, funded by readers.”
Holistic, scalable and flexible
The Guardian charged TAP CXM with transforming their vision for reader centricity into a roadmap encompassing data management strategies, technology solutions and people organisation.
The Process
The project kicked off with an intensive consultation period to understand the information coming in and accumulate ideas from Guardian employees.
TAP CXM Principal Consultant Darron Gregory lead the work from TAP’s side, identifying key challenges:
- Huge volumes of data flowing in daily
- Multiple communication channels
- Dissipated global audiences
Darron’s work extended beyond the strategy. The resulting roadmap laid out how the Guardian should organise around data to best serve readers.
The Result
To cut a long story short: The results are excellent
The Guardian did revolutionise their operating model to achieve some staggering successes:
- Grew revenue by more than £10 million in 5 years
- Attracted 560,000 recurring contributions and 585,000 single contributions
- Saw Guardian Media Group record its first profits in 2 decades
The BBC called it “one of the most significant turnarounds in recent British media history.”
TAP’s proposed data strategy and target operating structure is evident in the Guardian’s contribution model.
Guardian publications and platforms remain successful because audiences in the UK, USA and Australia receive the best online experience and most relevant messaging.
It might look a little different in the final edit, but TAP’s contribution is there if you read between the lines.
How to know your audience and treat them as individuals
Processing data from more than 2 billion unique browsers and 20 billion page views each year is a significant challenge.
The revised data architecture integrates several sources. Guardian teams access different views for customers, subscribers, visitors and readers in a way that prevents overlapping segments from contaminating the data.
In practice, this enables the Guardian to know their audience and treat them as individuals.
And that story never gets old.
