Increasing Engagement by 35% for The Telegraph, The UK’s Leading News Publisher

The Telegraph

The Telegraph is one of the UK’s most established news publishers, reaching millions of readers across its website and mobile app. With a large, fast-moving content catalogue and a highly diverse audience, helping readers find relevant stories quickly and naturally is an ongoing priority.

To further strengthen content discovery and reader engagement, The Telegraph partnered with Recombee to support real-time, personalized recommendations, designed to work alongside strong editorial standards rather than replace them.

+35%

CTR uplift versus a competitive solution
in A/B testing on article detail pages

+8%

Average sessions per user within
the personalized Life section

Situation

A large and continuously evolving content catalogue spanning news, politics, business, lifestyle, culture, and more
Millions of readers with highly diverse interests and reading behaviors across web and mobile platforms
Increasing expectations for relevance, speed, and personalization at scale
A clear need to balance advanced personalization with strong editorial standards and content quality

Objectives

Deepen reader engagement and content discovery across digital platforms
Optimize click-through rates and onward journeys from article pages
Deliver real-time personalization across web and mobile app experiences
Apply AI-driven recommendations in a way that aligns with editorial priorities and oversight
Gain deeper insight into content performance and reader behavior to support data-informed decisions

Solution

Recombee supports personalized content recommendations across The Telegraph’s digital platforms. Personalization influences which content is shown, in what order, and where, adapting in real time as readers interact with the site or app.

Personalization is applied in a way that complements editorial decisions rather than overriding them.

Article Page Recommendations

Dynamic recommendation boxes surface related, same-category, and top-performing articles, encouraging continued reading beyond the initial visit.

Key Benefits

Stronger onward journeys from article pages
Increased exposure to relevant content across the catalogue

Life Section Personalization

The Life section adapts for each reader through personalized article selection, dynamic topic ordering, and a continuously updating feed.

Editors define curated article pools, while Recombee personalizes:

The order of editor-approved content
The ordering of lifestyle sections (Film & TV, Cars, Fashion, etc.)
The articles surfaced within each section
The dynamic feed experience

This ensures personalization operates within clear editorial boundaries.

Key Benefits

More relevant lifestyle content for each reader
Faster access to preferred topics
Stronger onward journeys within the section
Preserved editorial control

Benefits & Results

+35% CTR uplift versus a competitive solution in A/B testing on article detail pages
+8% avg. sessions per user within the personalized Life section
Increased content exploration across article pages and sections
More relevant and personalized reader journeys across web and mobile app

Recombee’s Solution in Action

Real-Time Article Recommendations

At the end of articles on both web and mobile, readers see dynamic recommendation boxes featuring:

Related articles
Content from the same category
Top stories from across The Telegraph

These placements help readers naturally continue their journey after finishing an article.

Personalized Life Section

In the mobile app, the Life section is fully personalized for each reader.

This includes:

Personalized Editors’ Picks
Dynamic Section Ordering
Continuous Personalized Feed

Instead of a fixed layout, the section adapts to what each reader is most likely to engage with.

Personalized Editors’ Picks

Editors curate a pool of recommended articles. Recombee then personalizes the order in which those editor-approved articles appear for each reader.

This keeps editorial selection intact while allowing the reading experience to feel personal.

Dynamic Section Ordering

Lifestyle sections such as Film & TV, Cars, and Fashion are ordered differently for each reader.

Both the order of the sections and the content within them are personalized, allowing the most relevant topics to surface first.

Continuous Personalized Feed

Readers also see a continuously updating feed of articles tailored to their interests.

The feed is designed to:

Avoid repeating content already shown elsewhere
Encourage broader discovery
Keep the experience fresh and varied

Expert Support

Recombee works closely with The Telegraph’s teams to refine personalization over time. Hands-on support from ML and data science specialists helps test new approaches, adjust recommendation strategies, and continuously improve performance as reader behavior and editorial needs evolve.

Segment-Aware Analytics

Recombee's GenAI analytics pipeline gives The Telegraph's editorial and analytics teams real-time visibility into fast-moving newsroom data, turning raw content signals into clear, actionable intelligence.

Using LLM embeddings and sparse autoencoders, articles are automatically clustered into emerging topic segments and named in plain language, with no need for analysts to interpret raw model outputs. Dashboards refresh every 15 minutes, surfacing which themes are rising, which are lasting, and what is driving high-value engagement.

The result is a shift from article-level metrics to segment-level insight, helping editors make faster decisions on promotion, commissioning, and content focus.

Published and presented at the ACM RecSys Conference (September 2025). Read the paper.

“We use Recombee to power our AI personalization & Search at The Telegraph. It immediately proved its value, securing a 35% CTR uplift in an A/B test against a competing solution while simultaneously enhancing our editors' ability to manage and analyse content performance. Beyond the numbers, the collaboration with the Recombee team has been excellent, they helped us push our thinking and we were delighted to jointly present at the RecSys conference and be recognized as an INMA '26 finalist for "Best Use of Generative AI".”

Tom Kelleher

Director of Emerging Technology, AI and Personalisation

About The Telegraph

The Telegraph is one of the United Kingdom’s leading news publishers, delivering content across news, politics, business, lifestyle, and culture through its website and mobile app. With millions of readers, personalization plays an important role in shaping modern digital experiences.

Visit The Telegraph