> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://onemanandhisblog.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Maximising audience yield – and engagement - URL: https://onemanandhisblog.com/2026/09/maximising-audience-yield-and-engagement/ - Published: 2026-09-10T14:18:05.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-10T14:18:05.000Z - Description: How do we transalte audience strategy into business benefit? An expert panel discusses the challenges. - Author: Adam Tinworth - Tags: audience strategy, The Times, The Guardian, Future of Media Technology, Sarah Ebner, Anna Sbuttoni, Liz Wynn 👨‍💻 **These are live-blogged notes from a session at the Future of Media Technology conference. Prone to error, inaccuracy and howling crimes against grammar and syntax. Post will be improved in the coming days (and this part of the warning removed).* ### Panel - [Dan Rua](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danrua/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com), CEO, Admiral - [Anna Sbuttoni](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-sbuttoni-60679925/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com), deputy head of digital, *The Times* and *The Sunday Times* - [Liz Wynn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizwynn/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com), chief support officer, *The Guardian* - **Chair**: [Sarah Ebner](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahjebner/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com), editorial and strategy consultant --- ## How do we define visitor yield? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/36/d8/36d823b7-59a1-4c8b-91bd-a54c64552596/content/images/2026/09/IMG_9024.jpeg) **Liz Wynn**: I think visitor yield sounds very reductive. I think it means maximising the engagement and support potential of the audience. What really matters is to get back to the fundamentals of how you deliver for your audience. **Anna Sbuttoni**: The whole conversation is moving away from volume, views and reach – and to value. But also the value we give to a subscriber? It’s not necessarily just about volume. It’s about find ways of measuring engagement — both in terms of how often they’re coming to us, and what actions they’re taking. Not only that, but it’s a good discussion because it incentivises quality and good journalism. Getting them to download the app is the key thing. Over 70% of the readers use the app. **Dan Rue:** What’s the next thing you can do to move that visitor along the chain of engagement. There are dozens of steps — and you can cultivate that process over time. When you start a relationship in real life, you don’t jump straight to marriage. You introduce yourself, you have a date, a meal, a holiday. **LW**: We think a lot about shared goals — how can all parts of the business work towards that relationship. We think a lot about frequency, about triggering habit. We have a shared goal are community. The moment of departure can be a trigger for return. You need the habit, the impulse to return. These things really matter: the newsletter, visitors signing in, and finally the app. All roads lead to the app. ## Areas of focus in audience growth **AS**: We’ve introduced a new metric called the daily return rate. What is the key thing we want to drive? Daily habit. And we made that a north star we’re all driving towards. The metric is daily active users divided by monthly active user expressed as a percentage. It incentivises quality, and that has to be the message for everyone, including the newsroom. We have a whole new emphasis on community, and we have a new head of community, Rachel Duffy. **LW**: The Guardian is investing in more innovation around our editorial — particularly multimedia and community building. It’s not purely an off-platform thing, but it enriches the core community. The return of community is really important. **DR**: There are a couple of things that are almost implied in what you’ve discussed. Firstly, there’s a commitment to the overall journey. That’s really critical — and it needs to come from the top. You also need unifying metrics and the teams aligned about the idea that it’s a single visitor journey. If we’re going to have a relationship with that person, we require a caretaker of that journey. ## How is AI impacting what you do? **LW**: We’re invested to make sure we have better visibility of the audience data. The possibilities that technology and AI lend to this space are really exciting. I think there is a force for change there. Looking after the plumping as well as the intent is critical. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/36/d8/36d823b7-59a1-4c8b-91bd-a54c64552596/content/images/2026/09/IMG_9028.jpeg) **AS**: We’re testing using AI to recommend next actions. A lot of the community team’s time used to be comment moderation — but AI has brought that workload down. It’s a really clear win — it’s solved a hard, horrible job and freed up time to innovate. **LW**: We’ve been super powering our predictive models with AI. We’ve had some very successful pilots of ML-enabled predictive model techniques. **DR**: AI is infused in everything we do across the journey — it’s journey optimisation, but we also use it in engagement and conversation with visitors. The newest thing they do is the visitor copilot, which tunes the content into a conversational experience. ## Is there a danger that publishers are focusing on existing readers over acquiring new ones? **LW**: We have a significant and valuable advertising business alongside our supporter revenue. It’s always a balance about how heavily you go for an intervention to deepen the relationship, like a sign-in request. As traffic trends change, we need to be present wherever our audiences want us to be. That has a dual purpose — it’s powerful in the upper funnel, but it does also drive engagement in of itself. **AS**: Reach is still important when it’s meaningful reach — when you’re consciously thinking about who you are going over with this piece, when you’re targeting people who are more likely to subscribing to *The Times*. A lot of our off-platform work is about brand consideration. There’s a complete switch and change in how we approach our social video formats — putting the journalists front and centre in that. We’re “heroing” our people for the right audiences. Social is essential still at *The Times*. **DR**: There’s an ongoing risk of just renting audiences on platforms rather than investing in your existing ones. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/36/d8/36d823b7-59a1-4c8b-91bd-a54c64552596/content/images/2026/09/IMG_9018.jpeg) ## Audience Q&A ### The Guardians stopped asking audiences to support a particular beat. Why? **LW**: We do some of that still, but we want our audiences to understand why we’re different and why our funding is so different, so we do choose elements of our coverage to foreground. Our messaging has been tested quite throughly, and we have the scale to do A/B test quite quickly. ### How many Times subscribers come for the games, and move to the content? **AS**: Our puzzles are an important part of driving habit. We’ve switched into quick play games — we’ve recently [launched Picle](https://www.thetimes.com/puzzles/quizzes-and-teasers/picle?ref=onemanandhisblog.com), which you should play. We use images from *The Times* archive, and you have to guess the year and the location. But you learn something new every time. ### One actionable takeaway? **AS**: Distinctiveness and personality, and focus on what’s worth paying for and what you can’t get anywhere else. **DR**: We have free tag to [size the revenue leakages](https://blog.getadmiral.com/the-revenue-leakage-monetization-gap?ref=onemanandhisblog.com) that normal analytics don’t pick up — do that. **LW**: Foreground your direct connections with your audience. Everything you can do there is important.