Publisher First-Party Data: A Coffee With Camilla Child, Telegraph

"Publishers Are In a Privileged Position": A Coffee With Camilla Child, The Telegraph

by Dana Lee on 18th Feb 2026 in Video Interviews

In this episode of A Coffee With... Camilla Child, director of commercial strategic growth at The Telegraph, joins ExchangeWire's head of content John Still over a cappuccino to chat publishing and first-party data.

Camilla has been at The Telegraph for close to nine years. Coming from a data background, she built and launched The Telegraph's first-party data product, Telegraph One, back in 2020. More recently, she helped launch Compass, their in-house research and insights agency. Tune in as she and John discuss the development of Compass and the future of first-party data.

Publisher First-Party Data

Publishers spend years building credibility and cultivating audience trust. Those strong reader relationships generate valuable first-party data which they can then share back with brands to deliver meaningful, actionable intelligence – not just pure play media.

"Whether they're big news brands or smaller specialist titles, I think publishers are in a really privileged position that they have that trusted relationship with their readers, so they have people coming directly to them as a source of information that they can trust. But also, you see what people are reading, engaging, commenting, what they're coming back to, what they're spending the most time on."

Compass & First-Party Tools

Launched in 2024, Compass offers a suite of products where brands can get access to The Telegraph's research and insights, either as part of a media activation or separately to it. Camilla describes the initiative as a natural evolution of the work the company has done with first-party data. Such in-house tools further diversify their offerings as a media business.

Compass was built off three core pillars of The Telegraph's strengths. The first is engagement, with subscribers showing an average dwell time of 20 minutes on their app. This sustained attention provides a deeper understanding of audience interests across a diverse range of topics.

The second is research. The Telegraph has the largest reader panel of any UK news brand, with 18,000 people they can flexibly survey on attitudes and preferences. The final piece of the puzzle is identifiers: people-based IDs connect activity across devices and browsers, enabling them to corroborate research with real audience behaviours on the site.