Ancestry
Challenge
Ancestry are the world's largest for profit genealogy company, with core focuses in DNA Kits & Family History. For marketing, they have been on a maturity journey to in-house some of their functions, particularly with paid media in certain geos but required support to go on this journey.
Approach
Support was provided on a project basis, initially by auditing how paid media was being run by the incumbent agency & building the necessary process / roles to in-house. This involved the rebuild of campaigns, upgrades to tracking and new processes / automations to support the expanded in-house function within Ancestry. Programmatic activity was also plan / bought via Jonathan in Q4 2025 and built into an inhousing plan for Q1 2026.
Results
Since in-housing the first set of markets, Ancestry has benefited from higher levels of transparency and more reactive outcomes based on their paid media campaigns. The blueprint has been setup to expand into additional markets in-house. Programmatic performance also saw significant improvement Year on Year, enabling Ancestry to consider it in future media planning.
“Jonathan played a pivotal role in supporting our transition from an agency to an in-house performance marketing team. He delivered an exceptionally thorough audit of our activity, taking the time to understand our business in depth by conducting stakeholder interviews alongside detailed analysis of our performance and advertising platforms. The audit provided a clear set of quick-win recommendations as well as longer-term strategic initiatives, each of which was scored to help us prioritise activity.
Jonathan’s expertise in data and measurement was particularly valuable, strengthening both our performance framework and decision-making. He also drove meaningful operational improvements by streamlining processes and reporting, reducing administrative workload by over 10 hours per week which enabled the team to focus more on optimisation, strategy and growth.
In addition, Jonathan significantly upskilled the team in programmatic. He managed the channel during Q4 before successfully transitioning ownership in Q1 through structured training, clear documentation and practical guides and checklists.
Jonathan’s knowledge of performance marketing and the wider digital ecosystem is <outstanding and he is consistently generous in sharing his expertise to help teams stay ahead in a rapidly evolving industry.
