Growth tactics & organisational readiness for data science in a fast-moving AI ecosystem
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Arrival, registration and coffee
Welcome and overview of Data Science Day 2026: Growth Tactics and Organisational Readiness for data science in a fast-moving AI ecosystem.
Data-driven storytelling is transforming how newsrooms engage audiences in the age of AI. By leveraging geospatial satellite imagery and vector data, journalists can uncover, verify, and visualise real-world events such as land-use change, environmental damage, and urban growth. Starting with the Copernicus Programme Browser, this session demonstrates practical workflows for exploring satellite imagery, interpreting spectral bands, and combining raster and vector datasets to create compelling narratives. Participants will learn how these formats can deepen audience trust, strengthen engagement, and grow reach in meaningful ways while integrating AI-driven tools into editorial practice.
The “Audience Engagement for Journalism” project presents a structured and practical framework for audience work in newsrooms. By providing a clear methodology, the project addresses contemporary distribution challenges and offers strategic guidance for growing audiences in meaningful ways. Its approach demonstrates how news organisations can integrate audience insights into editorial and operational decision-making, supporting both engagement and long-term growth.
This study presents Schibsted’s newly launched model for anonymous users, designed to improve user engagement and drive sales. Initial results indicate promising performance, suggesting that the model effectively addresses challenges in interacting with non-registered users. With further maturation of supporting machine learning technologies, additional models are expected to be deployed throughout the autumn, enabling scalable improvements in engagement metrics and commercial outcomes.
Building a foundation for your data. Combining data sources in a single cloud storage. Building upon data sources to create an expanding solution. Enhancing the system with Generative AI to increase in-house knowledge.
This session shares practical insights from launching a comprehensive editorial data suite designed to support smarter, data-informed decision-making.
It explores key lessons learned—from defining meaningful metrics and aligning stakeholders to driving adoption and embedding tools into daily editorial workflows. Attendees will gain actionable takeaways for building a stronger data culture, ensuring newsroom buy-in, and turning insights into measurable editorial impact—without compromising journalistic values.
Many news organisations continuously produce dashboards in response to internal requests. Over time, this creates a collection of technically sound reports that are rarely used. The effort is considerable. The impact on decisions is often limited.
The problem is usually not data quality or visual design, but where the work begins. Analytics initiatives often start with metrics instead of a clearly defined decision context and established ownership.
Drawing on his experience leading Data & Insights at RTL News, Stefan Fröhlich reflects on the shift from delivering dashboards to treating analytics as data products. This means starting with the decision to be supported, validating assumptions early, and addressing ownership, adoption and iteration as part of a product lifecycle.
Standard CLV models often assume homogeneous customer dynamics across promotional regimes. Our causal analysis showed this assumption fails: weekly promotional offers generate structurally different retention and value trajectories compared to default monthly contracts. Estimating a single pooled model therefore induces systematic bias.
We develop a hierarchical, brand-wise CLV framework using flexible GLMs with spline-based specifications to model offer-level heterogeneity explicitly. To address data sparsity in weekly cohorts, we apply hierarchical reconciliation, enforcing coherence across promotional and brand aggregation levels while borrowing statistical strength from higher levels.
The result is a regularised, promotion-aware CLV system that improves calibration for short-term offers without sacrificing stability at aggregate levels. This approach operationalises causal segmentation within a statistically coherent CLV framework for multi-offer subscription businesses.
Wrap-up of the day’s key takeaways, facilitated discussion, and closing remarks from the Programme Lead.
Informal networking drinks
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Meet your fellow conference delegates and check out our partners and their solutions.
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Conference Overview + What challenge do you want to meet? What problems are you trying to solve? And what do you hope to take away from these two days? Share a pivotal learning moment so far in 2026: successes AND failures most welcome.
To frame the conversation for the two days, Nic Newman of the Reuters Institute will join us to discuss the latest revenue trends uncovered by his annual trends report in which he canvasses hundreds of media leaders around the world.
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Learn how FootballCo’s Goal-e AI technology helped its Goal site increase traffic by 42% and users by 22% since the last World Cup. Only one property in its portfolio has reader revenue in its commercial mix. While advertising has been challenging for many media businesses, FootballCo also increased revenue by 13% year over year. Revenue growth was driven by one of the major themes of the conference: diversification.
Hear from FootballCo’s CEO Juan Delgado how novel content formats drive engagement and how a diversified revenue portfolio drives their financial results. Only one of their properties has a reader revenue stream, and only a quarter of its revenue comes from traditional display advertising. Instead of reliance on the two traditional pillars of media revenue, they have leaned into affiliate revenue and fashion collaborations to deliver enviable results.
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Reader revenue has become a key pillar of The Guardian’s business with more than 1.3m recurring supporters. The Guardian is known for its agenda-setting journalism, and it has developed a sophisticated major events playbook to ensure its coverage of large set-piece events builds on its editorial reputation.
In the UK, it is also well known for its excellent sports coverage, including its popular Football Weekly podcast. The World Cup gave it an opportunity to build its football audience globally. To achieve their goals, they adapted their key events playbook to win at the world’s biggest tournament. She will showcase how it leveraged its most ambitious sporting coverage yet across its product portfolio. They brought the Football Weekly podcast to New York for a live audience recording and promoted their app for the 2026 World Cup to convert new audiences into loyal, paying members.
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This workshop runs from 11:30 to 13:00 and is for DSD attendees only, followed by the DME networking lunch at approximately 13:00.
Alternatively, DSD attendees can join the Digital Media Europe session at 11:45: World Cup: How The Athletic’s Full-Team Effort Drove Audience Growth.
What it really takes for a media organisation to turn AI into value
In this session we demonstrate a full AI business transformation journey in just 90 minutes, live, for a fictional news company. With self-built AI solutions we benchmark the company and show how AI is reshaping its business model. We then build a future target picture and use our AI Business Health Check to assess where it needs to grow beyond technology and data. Next, our AI Use Case Engine explores high-impact use cases along the value chain. Finally, we take one use case towards a working solution with our AI Innovation Sprint.
Throughout, people lead and AI supports. We show how AI can help organisations and their people live up to their full potential, and what kind of leadership makes that possible.
Your takeaways
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DME networking lunch begins at 12:30. DSD workshop participants can join at approximately 13:00, once the workshop concludes.
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This presentation looks at how Facebook monetisation has created a significant new revenue stream for Newsquest. It explains how original local content, engagement and a multi-format social strategy can turn the journalism we already produce into direct income.
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For decades, the Daily Mail built one of the world’s largest digital news audiences around free access and advertising. Now, subscriptions have become a major strategic priority, with DailyMail+ growing rapidly and dmg media targeting one million digital subscribers.
Tor Jacobsen, Group Managing Director, Subscriptions at dmg media, will explore how the company is building a subscriber-first business without abandoning the reach that underpins its advertising model. What journalism converts readers into subscribers? How does the Mail decide what remains free and what becomes premium? And once someone subscribes, what creates the habits that keep them coming back? Drawing on Tor’s long experience growing Schibsted’s reader revenue business, the session will also examine what lessons are transferable to the Daily Mail and what is fundamentally different when applying them to a global, advertising-led news brand.
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AI assistants show that audiences want more than information: they want help understanding, deciding, imagining possibilities and taking action. Through short provocations, live polls and a shared canvas, this interactive session explores which new user needs are emerging, how machines are serving them, what those machines need to do this effectively, where journalism adds distinctive value and what newsrooms should receive in return.
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Actu.fr, one of France’s most visited news websites, is moving from a fully free digital model to subscriptions across a network of around 100 titles and 400 journalists.
Amandine will share how Groupe Actu approached this shift from the newsroom out, training every editorial team, redefining each title’s value proposition, and giving journalists a direct role in deciding what content should sit behind the paywall. She will explain the methods used to move towards a more reader-first approach, from the “Compass of Expectations” to new writing techniques designed to create greater value for subscribers, and what the group has learned from recruiting more than 1,500 new subscribers a month.
The central lesson: subscription growth works better when monetisation is treated not as a technical or marketing exercise, but as a shared editorial ambition.
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Three WAN-IFRA Digital Media Award Winners across Europe and Africa showcase their industry-recognized projects on:
Best Marketing Campaign for a News Brand (Regional European Award Winner) from The Press and Journal (DC Thomson), UK: The P&J – Your voice of the North
The Press and Journal’s “Your Voice of the North” campaign was a mission-led brand repositioning aimed to transform the 275-year-old legacy title into a modern, indispensable civic voice for Northern Scotland. Facing a market reluctant to pay for digital news, the campaign moved away from transactional marketing to focus on emotional relevance, proving its value through a “show, don’t tell” strategy that highlighted real-world journalistic impact.
Best Reader Revenue Strategy (Regional European & Global Award Winner) from NTM, Sweden: Winning the young ones
To capture a younger generation of readers, Swedish media group NTM launched a strategic “under-25” initiative offering free, unlimited digital access until a user’s 25th birthday. Using a verified registration through official registers, NTM successfully removed the financial barrier typically associated with traditional news. This offer is powered by an automated onboarding process and a newsroom-wide editorial shift toward TikTok and youth-led reporting.
Get inspired by their peer-reviewed projects and bring home actionable takeaways.
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We’ll celebrate WAN-IFRA award winners and toast to their success! Cocktails and canapés await!
