Delfi × Kilkaya / Front Studio case study
More stories read.
Editors still in charge.
How Delfi used Front Studio to personalize its sports homepage, improve engagement and give editors more time for the stories that matter.
50.5% → 63.4%
Weekly homepage CTR
3.8 → 4.4
Pageviews per session
Volatile → Stable
Day-to-day CTR
“It’s difficult to let go of control.”
The starting point
700,000 monthly users. One homepage.
Delfi’s challenge was not a shortage of journalism. The Estonian publisher’s portfolio spans 22 portals, from investigative reporting and business to sport, food and entertainment. Its presentation describes an audience of 700,000 monthly users and 125,000 subscribers. All that variety still had to compete for space on one Delfi homepage.
Readers struggled to find the articles they wanted. Section editors pushed for stories that deserved an audience, but not necessarily a prominent position for everyone. The homepage editor had to reconcile those demands while keeping engagement up.
In Insight Shapes News, Tarmo Paju, Delfi’s managing editor for development and innovation, describes the pressure of more than 200 articles a day and a steady stream of colleagues asking for placement. A manually selected homepage inevitably leaves some of that journalism without the exposure it needs.
Relevance cannot come at the expense of responsibility
For Delfi, a homepage is also an editorial statement. It tells readers what matters, not only what they are likely to click. That distinction shaped the project from the beginning.
Paju draws a line between essential public-interest news and the broader range of stories readers might enjoy. Editors must remain responsible for the first. In the second, there is room to make the page more useful to each person. Someone returning to Delfi should be able to discover another good story rather than repeatedly encounter articles they have already opened.
Delfi had tried recommendation partners, experimented with different placements and worked on its own personalized feed. Its assessment of those earlier efforts was frank: limited success, a “black box effect” and a long development process when building from scratch. The next experiment needed to be understandable to the newsroom, with controls editors could actually use.
Start with sport, not the whole newsroom
The sports section offered a practical starting point: frequent updates, a loyal audience and a team open to experimentation. It also allowed Delfi to learn before applying the approach to its much broader main homepage.
The experiment launched on December 9. Front Studio managed the Sports Top 25 section, while editors manually handled four to seven of its 25 positions. The question was specific: could a page that responded to what readers had already read generate more engagement while preserving editorial priorities?
The approach
Start with what a reader has already read
Delfi did not begin by creating separate worlds for football fans and basketball fans. The initial personalization signal was simpler: has this person already opened this article?
Front Studio generates an article feed using signals such as pageviews, publication time, subscriber views and quick exits. In the setup shown in Delfi’s presentation, each article has a live score from 1 to 100. Opening an article reduces its score by 25 for that reader, making room for other stories to move up. That reduction is configurable; it does not mean the article has to disappear.
This separates two decisions. The newsroom chooses the goals and constraints that shape the feed. A reader’s history then changes the order within that framework. The resulting page can feel fresher without making topic-based assumptions about who that reader is.
Editors choose the rules and can override the ranking
Fixed, adaptive and loose pins let editors influence individual placements. A story can be kept in a deliberate position rather than left entirely to its score. Paju stresses that the option to take full manual control remains available, even though pinning everything would defeat the purpose of the experiment.
The ability to explain a placement mattered just as much. When an editor asks why a particular story is high or low, the team can inspect the score and the settings behind it. Paju became the editorial lead in that process: someone colleagues could ask, rather than a technical system they had to accept on faith.
The goals also developed over time. In the podcast, Paju describes a deliberately simple first phase focused mainly on pageviews, with quick-exit guardrails to avoid rewarding disappointing clicks. The later conference presentation shows a mix of pageviews, subscriber views and quick exits. These describe different stages of the work, not one unchanging formula.
The results
More click-through, deeper visits and steadier daily results
Delfi’s World News Media Congress 2026 presentation reports three changes in the sports experiment: weekly homepage click-through rose from 50.5% to 63.4%, pageviews per session increased from 3.8 to 4.4, and day-to-day CTR became more stable.
up from 50.5% (a 25.5% increase)
up from 3.8 (a 15.8% increase)
Readers found more to open, and pageviews per session rose alongside click-through. Just as important, day-to-day CTR became more stable. The gain held throughout the week instead of riding on a few exceptional days.
Weekly homepage CTR
Delfi Sport, across two years of weekly measurements
Inside the newsroom
More time for editorial judgment
Previously, publishing a story usually meant another manual change to the homepage. In the experiment, intervention was primarily needed when an editor wanted to pin a story or remove a pin.
In the podcast, Paju estimated that time spent editing the sports homepage had fallen to roughly half of the previous level. That is his operational estimate, not a formal time study. The presentation’s broader takeaway is consistent: less repetitive manual work, with more effort available for fine-tuning and testing.
“You can use this time to really tailor those five that you want to be tailored.”
Tarmo Paju, Insight Shapes News
The aim is to give a homepage editor more time for a breaking story, a better headline or the presentation of an important investigation. Editorial judgment still matters; fewer routine movements are needed to keep the rest of the page working.
Trust takes explanation, practice and time
The difficult part, in Delfi’s own summary, was “learning to let go.” A familiar Friday-morning placement can feel essential because it has always been there. Seeing the data creates an opportunity to ask whether it still serves readers.
Ivar Krustok, who worked on the project at Delfi and had moved to Initiative by the time of the recording, makes a related point: a tool alone cannot transform the work. The people who know the homepage need time to learn it, understand its behavior and put their experience to use.
The main Delfi homepage is the next step
Expansion to the main Delfi homepage is the next step. It brings a larger pool of stories, a broader audience and more consequential editorial decisions. The sports results should not be read as a completed site-wide rollout. Paju’s approach is deliberately cautious: keep the newsroom’s control, start with modest changes to ranking, and expand as confidence grows. Personalization can begin by recognizing what a reader has already read, while editors remain responsible for what everyone needs to know.
Learnings
Three takeaways from Delfi
Start where it’s safe
Sport gave Delfi a high-volume section, a loyal audience and editors open to experimenting, all before any change to the main homepage.
Explainability builds trust
Editors could inspect the score behind every placement. A black box would have failed in the newsroom, no matter the results.
Let go gradually
Pins and full manual control stayed. Automation earned its place by starting small and expanding as confidence grew.
On stage in Marseille
Watch the Full Presentation
Tarmo Paju presented Delfi's homepage personalization story at the World News Media Congress in Marseille, covering the sports homepage experiment, editorial control and what comes next for the Delfi front page.
Insight Shapes News / Episode 17
Introducing Personalization Where the Newsroom Usually Says No — At the Top of the Homepage
Hear Tarmo Paju and Ivar Krustok discuss editorial responsibility, reader relevance and the Delfi experiment with host Nils Ove Håland Riise. Published April 9, 2026.
Sources: Tarmo Paju’s “Personalizing our way forward,” World News Media Congress 2026, and the supplied transcript of Insight Shapes News #17. Original visuals: Delfi. This case study is written by Kilkaya, Delfi’s Front Studio partner.