"The Digital Revenue Revolution" Hotel Okura Amsterdam 17 and 18 October 2007 400 participants from 74 countries Summaries of all conference presentations will be posted here throughout the conference. Please check back for updates. WAN Calendar of Events Selected quotes from the conference More presentation summaries Envisioning the Newspaper 2020 Join WAN Seven steps to 50 percent digital profitability Birger Magnus, Executive Vice President, Schibsted, Norway Operating profits from online activities hover around 50 percent for Norway-based Schibsted -- and rose to 53 percent in the first quarter of this year. "I think probably the most important part of explaining why we’ve been able to do this is we’ve been able to diversify," says Mr Magnus. "We foster a culture of risk taking. We have made many mistakes. But we’ve learned from our mistakes and moved on." Mr Magnus presented seven key points that led to Schibsted’s digital success. Here are a few of them:  Schibsted had strong brands from the outset and a strong newspaper reading culture in Scandinavia, which also has high internet penetration.  The company has a clear vision. In 1995, the goal was "to be a leading Scandinavia media company by being the preferred content supplier to consumers and advertisers, irrespective of the choice of media." Today, the goal has expanded to include all of Europe.  Acquisitions were successfully used to increase capacity and competence. "Wed are not able to develop everything internally," says Mr Magnus. "There are a lot of entrepreneurs and they are getting money from the financial markets." How newspapers win on the web Leon Levitt, Vice President Digital Media, Cox Newspapers, USA The challenges to newspapers in the digital age are myriad and well-known, but there is no reason to be disheartened, says Mr Levitt, who presented a virtual primer on how newspapers can succeed against increasing competition with their on-line products. Mr Levitt’s big themes are familiar to newspaper companies that are becoming multimedia growth businesses: think more like broadcasters, both in the use of video and in advertising strategies; dominate in the core competencies such as breaking news, but add non-journalistic content that provides services and exploits interactivity. But Mr Levitt went deep into these themes and the digital business strategy of Cox Newspapers, one of the largest newspaper chains in the United States. A few of his suggestions:  Have a point of view. "I think some people aren’t as successful as they can be because they’re waiting to see what will happen. I’m not sure if we have at Cox Newspapers the right plan, but we have a plan. I believe it’s easier to make course corrections if you have a plan, rather than being a bottle bobbing in the ocean."  Use a variety of digital and print products to reach new and different audiences that don’t read the core newspaper -- the goal is to drive incremental and total reach in your local markets.  Don’t put the IT staff in charge -- sales and the business plan should be the drivers of technology. ACAP: an update Timothy Balding, CEO, World Association of Newspapers The Automated Content Access Protocol, or ACAP, is a proposed method of providing machine-readable permissions information for content. In plain language, it is a system by which publishers will have greater control over how their electronic content will be used by third parties, including search engines. ACAP is nearing the end of its one-year pilot phase, and Mr Balding presented an update of the project of a coalition of newspaper, magazine and book publishers and publishing associations, including the World Association of Newspapers. "Instead of trying to put together an anti-search engine lobby, there was a consensus to positively and proactively develop a system to help us, the publishers, and help them, the search engines, or anyone else who wanted to automate content in the future," says Mr Balding. ACAP is being tested by online newspapers, books and magazines and is attempting to standardise definitions publishers can use to alert search engines and others about what content can be indexed, for how long, and under what conditions. ACAP can be read by the web "spiders" that search engines use to seek out and index content for search and news aggregation. Although search engines have licensing agreements to post content on their news aggregation sites with a handful of news providers, the vast majority of content is still taken without permission or regard to copyright. ACAP will allow publishers a greater say in how their content is used. The next phase requires moving from theory to practice, and this will make it necessary to secure the open cooperation of the major search engines as well as further industry support of the project, which Mr Balding said was "just common sense." "The future of ACAP depends on the continuing support of the publishing industry: no one else is going to do this for us," says Mr Balding. More on ACAP at www.the-acap.org. The world of "and" David Kenny, Chairman and Chief Executive, Digitas, USA There is no doubt that digital media is growing in importance to people of all demographics and all nations, and Mr Kenny quantified this growth. But, at the same time, it is important to recognise that different people use media in different ways. Welcome to the world of "And": print AND digital; authority AND community; search AND publishers AND television AND community sites, local AND global; today’s margins AND tomorrow’s strategies. "I can’t paint a picture of how to succeed in the digital world, because we’re in an ’and’ world," he says. "I think we’re all struggling it, and I think we’ll be in it for another decade." Mr Kenny, whose Boston-based advertising agency was acquired for US$ 1.3 billion by Paris-based Publicis Groupe in April, provided survey results that illustrated how different groups of users interact with media for different tasks. "What I wouldn’t say is that older people are newspaper oriented and younger people are digital oriented. That’s too simplistic," he says. "We increasingly, when we can, buy our placement in news in a consolidated fashion, because the consumer is a combination of traditional and cyber, national and emotional, wired and physical. The consumer is not either, but both." Mr Kenny challenged newspaper companies to work more closely with advertisers and agencies to increase their share of the revenue. Newspapers need to make a better case for their place in the media mix, he said. Integrating print and web audience measurements Steve Seraita, Executive Vice President, Scarborough Research, USA When it comes to measuring newspaper audience, we are still most often counting audited print sales. But that doesn’t really reflect the total reach of newspapers, which are growing substantially on the internet. There is a need in the newspaper and advertising industries to adopt a new measure that combines print and online to provide advertisers with a more complete picture of newspaper audiences than print circulation alone, says Mr Seraita. "Media is in a state of flux. The internet is changing the way we recreate, socialise, get information and entertain," says Mr Seraita. "It is changing all media, not just newspapers. The good news for newspapers is, their websites are among the leading websites in the local markets, so we have something to build on." . Newspapers in the United States will begin integrating newspaper readership and online audience estimates into audited circulation reports beginning next month with the help of Scarborough Research, which has been measuring "Integrated Newspaper Audiences". The website audience is helping offset the slow but steady decline in print readership in the United States, says Mr Seraita, who presented research which shows that, based on the 50 top US markets, newspaper online sites are actually increasing the total publisher’s audience by 6.5 percent. Among 18- to 34-year olds, the lift was more than 10 percent. The integrated newspaper audience and similar measures are likely to spread elsewhere in future, as newspaper companies grow audience beyond the daily printed paper -- and beyond the web site. The development of niche products and a portfolio of a wide variety of products, both print and online, to extend a newspaper company’s reach need such measures to better reflect the audience being delivered by newspapers, Mr Seraita said. "Let’s present what we have in a positive way, because we have a lot of good things to talk about," he says. Unlocking the potential of digital print Willem Endhoven, Vice President Marketing & Business Development, IRex Technologies, The Netherlands Mr Endhoven’s presentation differed from others at the Digital Publishing Conference -- he talked solely about print. He made a case for digital paper as a better alternative to electronic newspapers on internet or mobile devices. Digital paper, enclosed in iRex Technologies iLiad reader, combines the convenience and readability of paper with the interactivity of electronic media, Mr Endhoven says. For consumers, it means getting digital delivery of the daily newspapers, updated throughout the day, in a device they can use at their convenience -- something readers of the French economic daily Les Echos have been able to do since September. For publishers, it reduces the opportunity to make incremental revenue from existing content, and saves up to 80 percent on printing and distribution costs. "This is an opportunity for you to combine the attractiveness of paper reading with interactivity, you can keep the convenience of portability, or reading when you want. You can keep the good things of paper and combine them with the good things of digital print ," says Mr Endhoven. Beating broadcasters at their own game Rolf Dyrnes Svendsen, Editor, Adresseavisen online, Norway Nothing online is growing faster than video, and Mr Svendsen showed how one regional newspaper has taken advantage of the trend to beat broadcasters at their own game. "As video sites and the user content sites are at the top of the online lists, both in Norway and in the rest of the world, we asked ourselves, ’what can we do as news providers to exploit this trend?’" says Mr Svendsen. The strategy included lots of initiatives that are familiar to newspapers already using video: equipping journalists with video-enabled mobile telephones, establishing a web TV desk to collect video from them and a variety of other sources (including readers) to produce programming. But it also included some unusual opportunities that also produced results: webcasts of sports events (a local boxing match), video game competitions with commentary, live interviews with local politicians, and well-produced shows that challenged local TV. Not all of it is traditional journalism. "Some people say it’s about quality, but if you ask us, we’d have to say that nudity is very popular," says Mr Svendsen. "But local and super-local content is also popular." User generated content is the future Hidde Kross, Vice President, SKOEPS International, The Netherlands In an electronic age when everyone can be a reporter, newspaper companies that ignore reader input do so at their peril, says Mr Kross. "Mass media ignoring user generated content will be more and more regarded as incomplete and out of touch with their readers," he says. That poses a problem for editors, however: the amount of content is overwhelming, and much if not most of it is trash. How do you find the good among the garbage? Or, as Mr Kross puts it: "Who catches the fish in the Youtube Ocean? Who digs up the gold in the Weblog Desert?" That’s where Skoeps comes in -- it’s the leading citizen journalism website in the Netherlands, backed by the publisher PCM and the Cyrte investment fund. Skoeps has a website for viewers who want to contribute and see the content directly, and it also sells its material to newspapers, TV and other websites. The year-old site is already at the break-even point -- revenue comes from advertising, resales, licensing and sponsorship. In the next six months, full versions of Skoeps will be introduced in German, Belgium and several other countries. Making money with maps Robert J. de Heer, Strategist, Publigroupe Switzerland and blogger on EuroMapsMania.com On-line maps are a nascent business, but Mr de Heer believes they hold great opportunities for newspaper publishers. "You have lots of data, and maps can help you make it accessible," he says. Mr de Heer provided a handful of examples -- neighborhood maps that displayed local crime statistics, nuggets of local history, or school ratings which can be accessed by clicking on the location of a school on a map. As a revenue model, he suggested embedding pop-up local ads -- for example, the schools ratings map could be supported by an ad for a local bookstore that appears when the user scrolls over the neighborhood. More examples of using maps on newspaper websites can be found at www.euromapsmania.com. "It is a new business, it needs a lot of time for future development, but the opportunities are huge," says Mr de Heer. More presentation summaries can be found here.