The New York Study Tour consists of two separate Study Tours (Blue and Red) that feature two fast-paced days of visits to leading media and technology companies who are shaping the future of both print and digital publishing.
Blue Study Tour Agenda
Monday
May 13
Check in and pick up your registration badge and programme for the study tour. We will begin loading buses at 8:15 a.m. for our first stop at the Wall Street Journal.
Location:
Westin Times Square Hotel
270 West 43rd Street
Lower Lobby
The Journal always has led the way among global publishers in charging for access to its valuable content. Consequently, it has developed some of the most sophisticated and effective subscription-sales protocols in the industry. We will visit with the architects of the subscription program, which achieved nearly 20% year-over-year growth in 2018.
Location:
The Wall Street Journal
1211 Avenue of the Americas
3rd Floor
The USA Today Ad network reaches more than 123 million consumers per month in the United States through 565 daily and weekly print products and their associated digital media. The company has captured a wealth of consumer data that informs everything from its content strategy to its subscription programs. Executives at the newly opened state-of-the art New York advertising office will discuss best practices for ad sales for both legacy and digital media.
Location:
USA Today Network
1633 Broadway
25th Floor
No legacy broadcaster has embraced Over The Top TV as avidly as CBS, the first mover in broadband-delivered programming among the major US brands. The company has attracted more than 2.5 million subscribers to a service launched in 2015 to provide Netflix-style access to all of its programming. Now, it is launching separate 24/7 OTT local news channels in each of the major metro markets where it owns TV stations.
Location:
CBS Interactive
524 West 57th Street
The Times has transitioned from a print-based advertising model to an audience-funded digital business. Digital now delivers 62% of the company’s revenues. Even though the company has recruited some 3 million digital subscribers, it continues to innovate in print. Top executives will tell us how they did what they did — and what they plan to do next.
Location:
The New York Times
620 8th Avenue
Enjoy cocktails at The New York Times to cap a long day of study tour. Note that this is the end point for today’s study tour. The Westin Times Square is two blocks away.
Location:
The New York Times
620 8th Avenue
Tuesday
May 14
Today’s Blue Study Tour bus will load at 7:15 a.m. for a prompt 7:30 a.m. departure to Lower Manhattan.
Location:
Westin Times Square Hotel
270 West 43rd Street
Lower Lobby
Digiday is a bootstrapped online trade publication that has provided perceptive and influential reporting the digital publishing industry since its founding in 2008. In our visit, we will learn about the company's subscription- and event-driven business model. We also will get a briefing from their editors on the key industry trends they have identified.
Location:
Digiday
1 Liberty Plaza
9th Floor
Optimera.nyc is an independent advertising-optimization company that was incubated at the New York Daily News. The business, which serves the entire Tribune publishing network and is rapidly adding customers at other media companies, builds ad volume and CPMs by solving a basic but vexing problem for publishers: Ensuring that ads are actually seen by consumers when they are served. The founder will share the inspiring story of how he launched his company with the support of a very traditional newspaper company.
Location:
Optimera
4 New York Plaza
7th Floor
A start-up founded in 2012, Spoken Layer is the smart-speaker technology provider for a who’s who of media companies ranging from Conde Nast to Politico to Yahoo. With smart speaker adoption occurring faster than for any other technology in history (including smartphones), founder Will Mayo will discuss the rapid development of - and future prospects for - this dynamic new media format.
Location:
Spoken Layer
208 West 30th Street
11th Floor
With some US$10 billion in ad sales in 2018, Amazon's share of the digital advertising marketplace trails only Google and Facebook. Amazon is expected to nearly double its market share by 2020, making it an ever-larger factor in the digital marketing ecosystem. We'll explore Amazon's impact on digital ad spending by visiting Quartile, which uses artificial intelligence to automatically connect brands with consumers.
Location:
Quartile
420 Lexington Avenue
24th Floor
Quartz was founded in 2012 by Atlantic Media as a native digital brand to serve next-generation business leaders around the globe. With a staff of 230 deployed around the world, it publishes editions in Africa, India, the United Kingdom and the United States. The company was purchased for US$100 million in 2018 by Uzabase, a business-information company founded in Japan.
Location:
Quartz
675 6th Avenue
4th Floor
Study Tour Leader
Alan Mutter
INMA’s popular World Congress study tours are organised and executed by Alan Mutter, an internationally known blogger and faculty member of the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. A newspaper editor turned Silicon Valley start-up CEO, Alan knows the trends and nuances behind the trends impacting traditional media in the emerging Digital Age.