WAN-IFRA asks who is winning advertising market share?

Advertising revenue remains the lifeblood of news media, but with an ever-expanding fight for market share, it is essential to accelerate strategies and develop attractive new products and services.

Trends in digital marketing

The session, which will present facts and trends on digital marketing spending with a special focus on mobile and video, will feature Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at Zenith Optimedia, Eric Harris, Executive VP of Business Operations at Buzzfeed, and Alexis Johan, managing director of Styria digital one, the advertising arm of Austria´s number one digital publisher.

Harris was one of Buzzfeed's first employees and has been a key figure in the development of its business model and new ventures, including Buzzfeed Creative, the company's 75-person unit that creates custom video and list-style advertising content for brands and is responsible for most of the company's revenue.

Johan is a journalist by training with an entrepreneurial temperament. His experience and ideas convinced Styria to put him in charge of its recently created digital business arm, where he heads a team of 60 technical developers, sales reps and engineers who are responsible for several news, lifestyle and content platforms in Austria.

Zenith Optimedia's forecasts serve as a reference in the media industry. Barnard has been head of the forecasting division, which has 250 offices in 74 countries, since January 2011, and has come up through the ranks since joining the company in 1998.

The Congress, Editors Forum and Advertising Forum will hold joint sessions featuring such notables as Arthur O Sulzberger, Jr, Chairman of The New York Times Company and publisher of The New York Times; Larry Kramer, President and publisher of USA Today; Martin Baron, Executive Editor of The Washington Post; and many others.

Speakers

However, the three conference streams will also separate for specific sessions focusing on business strategies, editorial and newsroom issues and advertising department concerns.

Other speakers in the Advertising Forum include:

• Arunabh Das Sharma, President of the Times Group in India

• Fred Hurkmans, Commercial and Marketing Director for NewsMaster in Belgium
• Lars Hordnes, Head of Digital Sales and VP of Digital for Amedia in Norway, in a session devoted to innovations in advertising
• Christopher M Lee, President of Deseret Digital Media, who will lead a session on mobile and local advertising and strategies for making video valuable
• Robert Johansson, Head of Real Time Bidding and Programmatic at Schibsted in Sweden
• Marcel Udo, Director of Automated Training for Telegraaf Media Groep in the Netherlands

• Alanna Gombert, CEO of Gombert Consulting, on the impact of programmatic, or automated, advertising on sales teams and what it means for the organisation of advertising departments

More than 1,000 publishers, chief editors, CEOs, MDs and other senior newspaper and news publishing executives are expected in Washington for the 67th World News Media Congress, the 22nd World Editors Forum and the 25th World Advertising Forum.

The events, organised by the World Association of Newspapers in partnership with the Newspaper Association of America, are the annual global summit meetings of the world's press. For more information, go to www.wan-ifra.org/dc2015.