Beyond Impressions – Using Data to Drive Attention

The Financial Times presented at the Programmatic World Forum to share their experience using Switchboard to drive innovation with real-time data.  

Barry Cassidy, Head of Ad Data Operations for the FT, and Michael Manoochehri, our CTO and co-founder, presented a case study about how the FT overcame a key obstacle to launch their award-winning Cost Per Hour (CPH) product. Here are a few insights from their presentation.

Peerless in the field of financial journalism, the FT is also a well-regarded pioneer in all things digital. Early on they realized that, using viewability data, they could move beyond impressions and sell audience attention (CPH). But as the data grew — 24 log-level files per day with 300,000 rows each — the FT became increasingly challenged by unsustainable manual reports.

The FT partnered with Switchboard to aggregate, standardize and automate their data ecosystem. The result?

• 80% reduction in reporting time compared to old manual reports
• 5X increase in granularity
• 3X increase in customer reporting frequency

The FT’s CPH solution was rolled out in only 3 weeks, without additional FT headcount. More details in our case study here.

Barry summarized his key learnings as:

• Think holistically
• Get granular
• Automate processes
• Do what you are good at

Switchboard revealed the real-time insights for the Financial Times by harnessing their data. To learn more, connect with us.