10.00 a.m.-12.30 p.m.
(New York time)
The INMA World Congress is the news media industry’s premier executive-level overview of the big topics facing our industry. Be welcomed to the final World Congress before INMA’s physical reboot of its conferences with a snapshot of news media in 2022 and what to expect from this year’s virtual event.
10:15 a.m.-10:55 a.m. (New York time) Mastering the transformation: what we can learn from Spotify and the music industry
Spotify’s first chief economist will share the most crucial lesson companies can learn in today’s challenging business environment: how to change the fundamentals of what you do, rather than carry on fighting a battle that is already lost. With the near destruction of the music industry at the hands of online piracy and its subsequent recover on the backs of digital streaming platforms is more than just the biggest story of disruption and reinvention of the digital age. For Will Page, it is also a trove of insights on how to confront the metamorphosis we are all facing in dealing with the pandemic era as accelerating tech and economic changes reshape our work, our play, and our minds. In this session. We will extrapolate music’s journey into eight guiding principles for pivoting through the ubiquitous disruption in nearly all industries and joyfully brings these insights to life – providing a guide for knowing not just how to grab the new vine, but when.
10:55 a.m.-11:35 a.m. (New York time) 10 assumptions that are no longer true – but still shape our organisations today
Today’s organisations are ripe for change. Over the next several decades, we will see very different business entities evolve. Why? Because today’s organisations were designed in response to conditions that no longer exist. Do you still think loyal behaviour at work will lead to a lifetime of protection and care from the corporation? Of course not. But many of our cherished talent management practices that are based on tenure, from pension plans to perquisites, like vacation, are holdovers from the days when this old assumption rang true. There are many new business realities that we haven’t yet translated into our management practices and organisational designs. It’s time to question which practices still make sense and whether there are new options better suited to today. In this provocative and interactive session based on a forthcoming book, Tammy Erickson will highlight 10 assumptions that underpin organisations, all of which have major implications for the way we manage talent and run organisations, and yet none are true today. She will leave participants looking at their organisations – and themselves – through a whole new lens.
11:35 a.m.-11:45 a.m. (New York time) Helping build the future of media with Google News Initiative
Experience in this session which tools and programmes the Google News Initiative has recently developed to build a more sustainable, diverse, and trustful news ecosystem. Get best insights of INMA and the Google News Initiative training sessions on digital subscription strategies for news media companies to build the engine from discovery to conversion to retention.
11:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. (New York time) The opportunities and threats ahead for news media
The business of journalism has undergone a massive stress test over the past 2.5 years of a global pandemic. Value propositions have been questioned. Strategies tied to trusted journalism have accelerated. Subscriptions have risen to the top of priorities even as the underlying pillars of data and product bolster its growth. Advertising opportunities have come and gone depending on pandemic phases, the Ukraine war, and other factors. In this presentation, learn more about where Boston Consulting Group expects media to go next: a snapshot of today, a peer into tomorrow.
12:15 p.m.-12:40 p.m. (New York time) News media’s priorities in the year ahead
As the INMA World Congress sets the agenda for news media, what are our priorities in the year ahead? In this closing session, learn what top media companies are prioritising – including a look back at today’s sessions on transformation and leadership and a look ahead to key subjects covered during the World Congress.
Maribel Perez Wadsworth, First Vice President, INMA, and President, News, Gannett | USA Today Network, United States
Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, Second Vice President, INMA, and President, International, The New York Times, United Kingdom
12:40 p.m.-12:45 p.m. (New York time) Takeaways of the day
INMA will distill for you the key learnings from today’s World Congress module on leadership and the emerging trends in news media.
To open this module looking at the maturing data organisation, hear from the lead of INMA’s Smart Data Initiative on the state of data at media companies: how data is fueling digital transformation, driving the acceleration of first-party data strategies, and contributing to culture change. This will be a briefing for members on what is emanating from INMA’s Smart Data Initiative.
"We are not talking about cookies, because they are the past," says Euan Fisher, who heads up data for Nine in Australia. In this presentation, Euan will take us through Nine's approach to a concerted data strategy that can serve an organisation with entities delivering in multiple channels and user markets. This session also will cover data governance, in particular how to respond to changing regulation and user expectations not just legally but ethically. Finally, learn how to apply a data strategy across properties depending on their identity and business models.
Maturing the digital organisation is a multi-step journey. In this session learn about News UK’s transformation journey and how they are addressing changes in their operating models, processes, measurement frameworks, and, more importantly, their people and culture. Pedro Cosa will illustrate how these changes supported News UK's progress by digging into his company’s recent work on personalisation — both in the commercial and editorial space.
Endeavor Business Media is focused on increasing the bottom line by creating meaningful experiences for users and turning their first-party data assets into a revenue-generating product. BlueConic's Sam Ngo will walk us through how they launched new buyer and content journeys across 10 brands, leading to a 247% increase in click-through rate, and how they moved a $180K per year product to a $1.4 million dollar product in just four months. 
Data is the fuel that drives digital transformation in media organisations, but how should you structure a data organisation in order to optimise the supply chain of data? In this session, the chief data officer of Gannett | USA Today Network will share best practices he’s learned in leadership roles across the media verticals of subscription TV, ad-supported TV, advertising research, video gaming, and news publishing. Gannett is making a significant investment in data, analytics, and data science in order to achieve its digital subscriber goal of 6 million by the end of 2025. To do this requires a customer-obsessed culture and building a data organisation that optimises time to data and time to insight.
In the past two years, The Economist has made significant investment in its digital and data capability with a clear strategic goal: long-term profitable growth, starting with its subscriber business. In this session, learn where to focus to make a difference, accelerate this transition, and lay foundations for the long term. How do you go from using data as a by-product of your digital activities to designing for first-party data? Where do you really need to invest first? With limited advanced analytics capabilities, what do you point them at? How do you get cultural adoption along the way to unlock each next step?
2022 is the year of big re-bundling of news media. To grow, publishers beef up their value propositions, expand into new markets and target new segments. They build, they buy, they borrow. What’s the subscription toolkit for 2022?
With almost 600,000 digital subscribers, Bild is the news subscription leader in Germany and one of the biggest paid content providers in Europe and in the world. A restless innovator, it is investing in video journalism, audience analytics and data-driven marketing. What’s the story behind its growth?
Based on INMA benchmarks, Canada’s Toronto Star is one of the fastest-growing brands in digital subscriptions in the past three years. What’s the silver bullet? There is none — it’s an engine built collaboratively across the newsroom, marketing data, and products. Learn how to build such an engine for your brand.
Recent INMA research reinforced the theory that registrations drive subscriptions. The good news is registered users have already demonstrated a commitment to the publication’s brand. But how can you usher them over the finish line? Matt Broad will share insights from Piano’s proprietary benchmark dataset about the path from registration to subscription and its impact on conversion rates
How to grow subscriptions beyond heavy news consumers? Argentina’s La Nación bundled its news product with a robust benefit programme offering discounts and perks across 3,000 retailers and services. While many other loyalty programmes aim at driving retention, this drives acquisition. Is it a missing bloc in the news media business model?
Brazil’s largest video streaming platform, Globo Play, reached new audiences and grew revenue partnering with Disney, Deezer, and Apple. How can bundling create and destroy value? Whom to bundle with and on what terms? What marketing technology is critical to success? Learn from the experience of the TV and streaming giant of South America.
Based on member feedback, INMA’s Advertising Initiative is focusing on the rise of advertising formats, the revised sales team, and the new role of print in the advertising fix. In this opening session, hear from the lead of the Advertising Initiative on the state of media advertising: selling advertising based on first-party data, the rise of branded content, what to sell when the world goes programmatic, and the true value propositions of print.
What does the c-suite at news media companies need to know about where advertising goes next? In this session, learn what the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) projects in the months and year ahead in advertising sales. What are the ranges of expectations? Where are the growth categories? What are the categories at risk?
Is the future of advertising sales all about automation and a reimagination of the selling model? If so, where do sales people fit in (or not?)? What will we sell in the future, however structured? Learn more about the McClatchy and its metropolitan newspapers are doing with a new and different approach.
Advertising remains a major revenue stream and commercial model for most publishers. Maximising ad revenue while improving the overall user experience is both a challenge and an opportunity for digital publishers. In this session, Viafoura President and COO Mark Zohar explores how publishers can leverage the power of community engagement and digital experiences to increase key metrics such as time on site, page view consumption, and retention and re-engagement to increase on-site ad impressions and revenue, drive higher click through rates and CPMs, and generate unique first-party data to better inform ad campaigns and deliver high-value audience segments to optimise overall ad performance.
Can branded content be the future of our main advertising sales revenue? Learn how to structure for success as we delve into Jagran's case studies (in print and digital) and provide you with a template for your development in this advertising area that is becoming increasingly important worldwide.
How do we cut across our disciplines and have truly integrated ad sales teams with collaboration from around our media business? Media 24 will share their case study on how they have adopted such an approach demonstrating the power of synergy and insights from inside the business from a procedure and revenue point of view. Plus, how does that impact the bespoke offerings they offer to their clients? 
After nearly 18 months of INMA’s Product Initiative, what have we learned about media youngest profession that is sweeping the world? In this opening session, learn more about the organisation-wide product mindset, bringing permanent innovation into the c-suite, breaking down traditional department silos, and optimising existing product.
As an innovator in app development, Times Internet will show how and why it can drive multiple revenue streams and talk, in product terms, about what problems are being solved. How can the app stand alone as a business? What audiences are being served and how are their experiences different? What innovative product formats are generating revenue? What unique advantages has Times Internet created to make the most of market opportunity?
Product can be a complex discipline — particularly when trying to prioritise amongst multiple brands, technologies, and individual wants and needs. In this session Condé Nast's global head of product and design will share her experiences on how OKRs can bring teams and goals into line. She will touch on managing OKRs at company, team, and finance level, and why this will always be a work in progress. 
INMA and the Meta Journalism Project are partnering on the ramp-up of extended reality (XR) for news media companies: multiple training series internationally, a town hall, and a report. What have we learned together? In this session, learn more about the five key findings of the partnerships and what news publishers need to prioritise – editorially and commercially.
In their strategy, Schibsted has recognised three major paradigm shifts in the way users behave. In this session the product director of paid products will take us through these shifts, deep diving into one: how they have developed synthetic voice to meet audio needs. Karl Oskar Teien will take us through how Schibsted looks at the user problem, what it has taken to build a solution, and how this has been embedded into existing as well as new products. 
The chief product officer (CPO) is becoming more and more important as a leadership role in news media companies. How do we detangle the content experience (product) from the content itself (editorial) from an ownership perspective? Or should we be looking at merging the two? At The Washington Post, the latter is true, and in this session we’ll hear how the CPO and the managing editor roles are working together to create best-in-class content experiences. 
A renewed focus on reader revenue means the time is right for INMA’s Newsroom Initiative to give newsroom leaders a forum to influence their businesses. The Initiative focuses on looking at business models for journalism, creating trusted journalism, and sharing best practices around culture. Hear from Peter, the Newsroom Initiative lead, on where the project is heading and the early insights on trust, culture, and the business of publishing.
The editor-in-chief of Arab News, Faisal J Abbas, is a leader in Middle East media and the embodiment of an emerging generation of journalists who are creating new international brands that reach into markets far outside the region. Faisal has led a revolution at Arab News to relaunch a modern digital operation as well as new editions in Pakistan, France, and Japan. In this session, he will talk about what it took to create the new Arab News and what the ambitions are for this important voice from Saudi Arabia and the region.
Hard lockdowns and working from home dramatically changed newsrooms around the world. Being forced to abandon the newsroom compelled leading Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter to rethink its collaboration tools and approach to working in and between teams. Two years on, working practices have changed dramatically and new methods of networking and connecting have become normal. Managing Editor Anna Åberg believes the lessons of working through the pandemic have led to a stronger newsroom culture and prepared staff for the rigors of the Ukraine story. In this session, Anna will explain the lessons, the failures, the crises, and the achievements in managing the newsroom and staff through the pandemic.
How do news media companies cope with publishing content to devices of all shapes and sizes while audience preferences change at the speed of life? In this session, Fred will share how to grow your media business with an agile, content-driven platform that fully embraces the capabilities of the digital future. Extend your news brand to a rich multimedia environment to reach new audiences.
Simon Robinson has one of the biggest jobs in international journalism: overseeing the output of Reuters, which is fed by 2,500 journalists around the world and serves business and media clients with breaking news, analysis, and insights. Simon will explain how Reuters aligns culture across a multi-national team spread across the globe, and how it creates a news file that drives its business goals, while remaining true to the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles that the company has long used to defend its independence and integrity.
Marcus Mabry guides the choices and strategy for the global programming of the CNN Digital Worldwide network. Himself a veteran foreign correspondent and digital leader, Marcus will explain how the team is aligned and works with the CNN brand values of speed, reach and accuracy.
As Google and Meta continue their country-to country navigation of regulation and legislation changes, something interesting is happening in places where publisher settlements are occurring: strategic collaborations between Big Tech and media companies for journalism, technology, and training initiatives are on the rise. In this executive briefing from INMA, distill what you need to know about how the Big Tech settlements are playing out.
Every day, media brands produce thousands of pieces of content that can draw the interest of many different readers. But how do they publish everything while also paying attention to SEO quality and controlling the coverage of men and women in the published articles? Ring Publishing will present a few real case studies on how AI technology helps these editorial teams have time for high quality content creation. 
When Gary Liu decided to step down as CEO of the South China Morning Post to lead the new startup 'Artifact Labs', he saw it as an opportunity to bridge news media and the fast-emerging world of NFTs and the metaverse. In this session, the outgoing SCMP CEO will brief INMA members on why the blockchain should matter to the news industry and what the 'Artifact' ecosystem delivers for content owners — whether you understand blockchain or not. Learn why a media company’s assets can become more valuable in the new world of NFTs.
After 20+ hours of World Congress, a few thousand hours of video training, in-depth reports, and taking the pulse of INMA’s vibrant communities, what is the playbook for news media in the year ahead? In this session, INMA distills the “lead to the story” cutting across initiatives dedicated to subscriptions, data, product, advertising, newsrooms, and Big Tech – how to mine new value and establish a new growth path.
