Case Study: The Economist reinvents advertising sales and achieves 10:1 campaign ROI with Oracle Marketing Cloud

The Economist Reinvents Advertising Sales and Achieves 10:1 Campaign ROI

The Economist, a 174-year-old news brand with a weekly circulation around 1.5 million (including 280,000 digital subscribers), set out to change perceptions and win back progressive, intellectually curious readers. The challenge was not just creative messaging but mastering vast third-party and first‑party data to segment audiences and prove advertising value—requiring a trusted platform to organize, scale, and personalize campaigns.

Using Oracle Data Management Platform and Oracle Marketing Cloud, The Economist performed deep audience analysis, built look‑alike segments, and ran a 12‑week, £1.2m dynamic contextual display campaign linked to breaking news. The effort delivered 3.6 million prospects, nearly 10,000 new subscribers, a campaign ROI above 10:1, a 50% reduction in CPA (reaching half the target in nine days), 1 million unique visitors that generated £500K in ad revenue, and large lifts in awareness and consideration (US awareness +64%, consideration +22%; UK consideration +32%, recommend +24%), while transforming the sales model toward cross‑platform content solutions.

The Economist

Stéphane Père

Chief Data Officer