Blue Study Tour (SOLD OUT)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.