Greg Stuart, President and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau and author of "What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Your Success," will discuss ways to measure and assess interactive advertising campaigns and how to improve them. The IAB represents nearly 70 percent of the US$ 7-8 billion online advertising industry.

The conference, organized by the World Association of Newspapers and World Editors Forum, examines a wide range of digital advances and focuses on new content development, delivery, and sales strategies. There is still time to register: full details are available at www.wan-press.org/digital2006.

Mr Stuart will speak in a session on new revenue opportunities that will focus on the key concern of publishers everywhere: how to generate more income from digital operations. He will be joined in the session by Zach Leonard, Digital Media Publisher of The Times of London.

And, in another session, participants will learn how to make their web sites more attractive to users and advertisers. Carl Rohde, President of Netherlands-based Signs of the Time, will provide a unique perspective on the issue: he’s a cultural anthropologist whose Cool Hunt project measures the mood and mentality of audiences to identify the elements that make certain products and services "cool", and therefore more popular with consumers than others.

Or, as Dr Rohde puts it, "It’s great to know what is cool but the million dollar question is, what makes something cool." He will speak about cool trends as they relate to media usage.

Other sessions include:

  Keynote addresses on "new and emerging opportunities" by Carolyn McCall, Chief Executive of Guardian Media Group in the United Kingdom, and John Fish, Publisher of the Naples Daily News in Naples, Florida.

  New content opportunities , which will examine content partnerships, aggregation, citizen journalism, social networking and other developments. The session will include Pete Clifton, Head of BBC News Interactive, and Dan Pacheco, Senior Manager of Digital Products of Baktopia/The Bakersfield Californian in the United States.

  "The Audience: Understanding, tailoring and targeting," which will examine consumer behaviour online and how newspapers can use it to provide tailored content and targeted revenue generation. Speakers include Takashi Ishioka, Director of the Asahi’ Shimbun’s Digital Business Project Team and Alexander Burmaster, an Internet Analyst for Nielsen/NetRatings.

  Is the "free generation" ready to pay now?, which will include best practice case studies of what customers are willing to pay for and how they are paying, from subscriptions to micro-payment models. Speakers include Una O’Hare, General Manager of Ireland.com and Ien Cheng, Publisher of FT.com, the website of the Financial Times.

  Organisational considerations in multi-media publishing, which will examine the benefits and drawbacks of integrating print and digital newsrooms and ad sales departments. Speakers include Melonie Hall, Regional Sales Manager of the Tampa Tribune in the United States, and Angus Frame, Editor of globeandmail.com in Canada.

  New "local" strategies and opportunities, which will provide a look at the strategies of both newspaper and pure-play internet companies in local search, classified advertising, new product development and other locally focused opportunities. The session will feature Jean Frédéric Farny, Director of Development for the French Regional Publishers Association SPQR, Chris Stanley, Managing Director of MatchWork, and Kate Bowler, Business Development Director of Platefood.

Full conference details here.

WAN had been a co-organizer, with Ifra and FIPP, of the Beyond the Printed Word publishing conference, but decided to withdraw from that event and create the new conference because new digital media strategies often involve close collaboration between editorial and online management resources. The World Editors Forum, the organization within WAN for senior newsroom executives, was the ideal partner.

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.