The Daily Mail is expanding its multimedia storytelling unit Deep Dive to a 20-person team, following a rapid rise in digital subscriptions.
The unit has added 10 staff members, bringing its current headcount to 18 developers, designers, and journalists.
The expansion builds on the success of interactive articles that have generated significant reader engagement since the format was placed behind a paywall in May.
Originally launched as a free feature to introduce interactive concepts to readers, the Deep Dive strand now generates an average of 60 to 100 new subscribers per article.
"These things are successful. How do we do more of them?
And the answer to how do you do more of them is you hire more people to do them, and you invest in talent and make sure that you're putting your money where your mouth is," said Harry Lewis-Irlam, Director of Visual Storytelling.
The unit relies on software tools including Shorthand alongside open-source libraries to manage costs.
To handle extensive datasets, such as the public release of the Epstein files, the team collaborated with the company's internal innovation department, using artificial intelligence to process large volumes of documents quickly before designers created interactive visualizations.
"We had to spend a couple of years building Deep Dives and putting them out there for free to promote the idea of what they are and why people want to read them, so that when we have put them now behind a paywall, people understand a bit more what they're getting when they subscribe," said Lewis-Irlam.
A single interactive feature mapping baby name trends generated around 4,500 new subscriptions across the United States and United Kingdom, marking the publication's most successful individual subscription driver to date.
In addition to direct reader revenue, the unit collaborates on commercial projects, including a multi-part series with the Alzheimer's Society that led to a 6,500% spike in traffic to the charity's advice pages.
"It's a no-brainer that you could take these things out to market and promote them… [with] a good return on investment," said Lewis-Irlam.
The expansion supports a broader strategy for Mail+, which recorded 400,000 subscribers in April and aims to reach one million by October 2028.
While 70 percent of overall Daily Mail readers access content on mobile devices, the highest engagement for Deep Dive articles occurs among desktop users.
"This is a product that we can take to market and sell to people, so we can make direct revenue from it," Lewis-Irlam said.
The team is currently recruiting two additional data journalists to reach its target headcount of 20.
The specialized unit continues to draw on reporting expertise from across the wider newsroom for its investigative coverage.
"That one alone, across the US and UK, has driven about 4,500 subscriptions, which is again by far the most subscribed article that we've ever done," Lewis-Irlam said.
The investments come as digital publishers increasingly shift focus toward specialized interactive features to convert occasional site visitors into paying subscribers.
"It's now such a big vital part of not only the future of the Mail, but it's obviously something that is proving to be successful.
So, they want to double down and make sure they invest in this quality content… the days of hitting as many people as you can as quickly as you can aren't as lucrative as they used to be," he said.
Deep Dive stories currently range from several hours to a few days to produce, with technical development ongoing to support complex features across varying user devices.
"If you want to build subscriptions, target an audience, and give them something to subscribe to, you can't just do it off pictures and words necessarily anymore… You have to offer them something that's worth giving your money up every month for, and that's where our push in visual storytelling really came from," said Lewis-Irlam.
