Whether readers want news, advice, analysis, or entertainment, The Telegraph editorial team are there to serve them, and in 2023, they tackled three key questions:

1. How do they display their journalism and scoops with the most impact so they deliver the greatest returns?
2. How do they deliver a high quality, habit-forming experience on the app which makes the homepage a journalistic experience in itself and not only about encouraging click-through to articles, an approach to set the Telegraph app apart from other UK publishers?
3. How do they help readers in different aspects of their lives beyond keeping them informed?

The Telegraph delivered some of the year’s biggest scoops and told them with ground-breaking interactive visual storytelling. This included The Lockdown Files investigation, a forensic analysis of over 100,000 government WhatsApp messages revealing how Covid decisions were made. It helped provide answers to bereaved families long before the official inquiry began.

It was presented with a bespoke hub and article style. A tool to replicate the conversations was created, with animated messages ‘delivered’ in real-time on the homepage and Lockdown Files landing page.

Their visual innovation was also displayed in The Rewriting of Roald Dahl and the King’s Coronation, including a brilliantly detailed 3D tour of Westminster Abbey.

On the app, they built engagement through adopting a highly visual “stream” of content on the homepage, deploying visual components and storytelling tools that had previously been the preserve of article pages.

These “particles” enable the editorial team to deliver autoplay videos, audio, motion graphics, polls, calculators, live sports scores, live business data, interactive charts, reader comments, picture carousels and more - on the app homepage itself.

The launch of a new Money channel, housing a huge suite of new content, including interactive tools, gurus, first-persons, and multiple ways to get advice on managing your money, was the first in a series of impactful products to help readers make the best of life. A revamped Health channel was launched in the New Year, with more to come this year.

The results have been spectacular with Money now the second-biggest subscription acquisitions channel in the newsroom.

The Telegraph is the fastest-growing digital subscriptions news publisher in the UK. IN a record-breaking year, they achieved their target of one million subscriptions by 2023. Subscriber page views rose by 13%, overall page views by 10%, commenting by 37%, and app visits by 19%.

With over 5m YouTube subscribers, The Telegraph overtook The New York Times to become the biggest news publisher on the platform/

The Telegraph was also the fastest growing news app in the UK last year, according to Press Gazette, and 72% of app subscribers use it daily, with its stickiness reflected by each spending on average 40 minutes on the app. For comparison, Ipsos data for 2022 showed Facebook’s equivalent was 34, TikTok 29, Instagram 10, and Twitter 6.

Developing the app increased average dwell time on the homepage, a key performance indicator, by 50% to 90 seconds per visit. Comments on app articles are up 79%.The team are now aiming to attract more paying readers to the Telegraph than ever before.

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