Vanneck-Smith said that as a result one in three people in the UK are on a database from which News International can identify readers, club members, bingo players and other customers most valuable to the organisation.

Around 200,000 individuals have been identified as “high-value” customers, meaning they are worth as much as £600 a year each to NI, she added. They could be rewarded for their loyalty and interest with services and brands – and potentially online subscriptions when the proposed paywalls around NI’s websites are erected next year.

Asked how far NI might stretch its newspaper brands by moving into other services, Vanneck-Smith said she had already ruled out financial services and would not be looking at anything that risked undermining editorial integrity.

“It comes back to trust. The reason we have permission is because trust is at the heart of what we do. I would like to be, in the situation in my wildest dreams, where you could see revenue streams from this activity being 50 percent of what we bring in as advertising,” she added.

She demonstrated how profiles of individual customers had been created to show the specific “touch points” for their dealings with News Corporation’s UK newspaper subsidiary, which publishes the Sun, News of the World, Times and Sunday Times.

This enabled the company to put a monetary value on each subscription to a newspaper or membership of a crossword club, according to Vanneck-Smith.