The session, entitled, "Newspaper marketing: avoiding the pitfalls", will feature a panel of experts who will examine the implications of common marketing errors and, more importantly, demonstrate how to get the best results from marketing budgets.

The session is one of six sessions to be offered during the global conference, which has become a popular meeting place for publishers, senior marketing executives and editors from around the world -- last year’s event drew nearly 500 participants from 73 countries.

This year’s event, organized by the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum, hosted by the Association of Spanish Newspaper Publishers (AEDE), and chaired by Tomas Brungard, CEO and President of the Stampen Group in Sweden, is expected to be even bigger. Details are available at www.wan-press.org/madrid2006.

Sessions include:

  Reader connections, which will focus on the drivers of sales and loyalty. The session will include presentations on how consumer goods corporations profit from customer relationship programmes, and how newspapers can fully exploit their circulation systems to develop powerful sales and marketing tools. Speakers in the session include Anders Goliger, Assistant News Editor of Göteborgs-Posten in Sweden, John Hay, CRM Consultant with The Globe and Mail in Canada, and other speakers to be announced.

  The digital/print content opportunity, which examines how newspapers are using cross-channel content to develop new business models and revenue streams. The session will include a look at new mobile technologies and their impact on traditional readership.

  Promotion - short term gain or long term investment?, which will look at the new wave of promotional offers that newspapers are using to attract readers. The session will provide examples of circulation-winning promotions and the long-term strategies behind them.

  A special "Shaping the Future of the Newspaper" report on circulation pricing, which will examine pricing models and approaches and demonstrate how to generate optimum revenues from newspaper products. The session will feature case studies and research from the WAN SFN Project, which identifies, analyses and publicises all important breakthroughs and opportunities that can benefit newspapers all over the world. More on the project can be found at www.futureofthenewspaper.com.

  New newspaper trends, which will examine both the free daily phenomenon -- with a special focus on the free newspaper "war" in Denmark -- and trends in newsrooms, particularly how newspapers are leveraging traditional content and delivering it across platforms.

For the evolving conference programme, a list of participants and other information, go to www.wan-press.org/madrid2006.

The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 73 national newspaper associations, newspapers and newspaper executives in 102 countries, 11 news agencies and nine regional and world-wide press groups.

Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: lkilman@wan.asso.fr.