A WAN-IFRA workshop on tools for contextual advertising and automatic news matching will be held in Oslo, Norway, on 15 April, and will provide an opportunity to meet systems suppliers that operate on the Nordic market, as well as hear case studies of newspapers that are using intelligent systems, both for editorial and commercial purposes.

Only 25 places are available: full details, including registration information, can be found at can be found at www.wan-ifra.org/contextworkshop.

Google AdSense is the best known and used example of contextual advertising, which displays advertisements based on the content displayed by the reader. But many sophisticated alternatives are rapidly entering the market. It can be anything from keywords accompanying editorial content, to advertisements that ’follow’ users around, based on their browsing habits, to other tools that work to provide personalised advertisements and content of interest to individual users.

"The workshop will focus on how publishers can increase the relevance, and improve their offerings, by matching articles with relevant advertisements, or by automatically matching their own editorial content with relevant blog posts or even with articles from other publishers on the same topic," said Kristina Bürén, Executive Director of WAN-IFRA Nordic, the Stockholm-based WAN-IFRA subsidiary that is organising the event.

The workshop will be held in English and in Scandinavian languages.

Participants will have an opportunity to evaluate how contextual advertising and content systems would work for them through meetings with five suppliers operating in Nordic markets. The suppliers will demonstrate their systems, talk about the latest developments and answer questions. They will also learn how several newspapers are already using such systems.

Participants will also get an overview of how some newspapers are using such tools to increase revenue and interest.

For full details, please consults www.wan-ifra.org/contextworkshop.

WAN-IFRA, based in Paris, France, and Darmstadt, Germany, with subsidiaries in Singapore, India, Spain, France and Sweden, is the global organisation of the world’s newspapers and news publishers. It represents more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries. The organisation was created by the merger of the World Association of Newspapers and IFRA, the research and service organisation for the news publishing industry.

Learn more about WAN-IFRA at www.wan-ifra.org or through the WAN-IFRA Magazine.

Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, WAN-IFRA, 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: larry.kilman@wan-ifra.org.