© Illustration by Aurélie Garnier
As Head of Product Management at Germany’s NPG Digital, Daniel Geigner and his team have left “one fits all” in the past – they now personalize around 80% of homepage content in their news app for every single user, based on reading behavior, interests, and regional relevance.
In this article, Daniel shares why and how they developed this technology, the huge success from the project, and how they’re building this out onto other touch points.
Key takeaways to copy & share
> NPG Digital personalises around 80% of its app homepage for every user, including readers who aren't logged in. Personalisation is the entry point to the lifecycle rather than a subscriber benefit > The mix matters. Readers explicitly pick a region and topics, while machine learning handles the rest, including surfacing content from whichever audience group they read most, be that parents, sport or crime > Personalised teasers get 10% click-through against 3% for manually placed content. Paywall hits are up 10% and average active days per subscriber up 28% > The clearest example is a local football club. Showing FC Energie Cottbus updates to everyone produced weak engagement. Showing them only to fans identified by reading behaviour transformed it > Their new chat assistant answers only from NPG's own journalism, and doubles as research. When readers ask questions directly, they tell you what they actually care about
Why we believe personalization is essential
