The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading global business news organisations, with a print and digital readership of over one million subscribers. Operating across a dual-revenue model (subscriptions and advertising) the FT faces the ongoing challenge of balancing audience growth with sustainable monetisation.

As a premium publisher navigating a rapidly evolving digital landscape, the need for data-led, scalable decision-making had never been more critical.

FT needed to establish their in-house experimentation team and scale performance marketing and audience revenue without compromising subscriptions. They required a transformative approach to audience monetisation.

Specifically, FT was grappling with how to grow its pool of registered (but not yet paying) users, while maintaining the integrity of its subscription funnel. Without a robust framework for testing and learning, decisions around paywalls, registration prompts, and audience segmentation were being made without sufficient data. At the same time, the impending deprecation of third-party cookies added urgency to building a first-party data strategy that could future-proof their commercial model.

In Digital established an embedded capability within FT’s teams, leveraging their Martech stack to deliver a high-impact test-and-learn program. We developed predictive models, defined optimal trade-offs between subscription and registration, and built a 2-phase test model with live risk mitigation controls.

Rather than operating as an external agency, In Digital integrated directly into FT’s existing teams, working alongside editorial, product, and data functions to ensure alignment from day one. This embedded approach allowed us to tailor our methodology to the FT’s unique audience dynamics and commercial priorities. The 2-phase test model was designed to balance short-term conversion goals with longer-term audience lifetime value, giving FT a repeatable framework for decision-making that would outlast the engagement itself.