What Ciklum Has Learned At The 64th World Newspaper Congress

This year Kyiv had a chance to host and Ciklum had a chance to co-sponsor the most important event within the global newspaper and media business – the 64^th World Newspaper Congress / 19^th World Editors Forum.  More than 900 journalists, Chief Editors and C-Level execs from 88 countries gathered at the Ukrainian House from September 3 to 5 to discuss hot trends and critical issues in today’s news media industry and shape the future of the newspaper.

The two hottest topics discussed during the Congress were how to successfully move from print to digital and how to monetize digital content.

The main takeaways from the World Press Trends and panel discussions include:

• In 2012, more than 40% of the world’s audience read news online, which is up from 34% in 2011,
• Digital advertising market rose from USD $42bn to $76bn from 2007 to 2011. However, only 2.2% of total newspaper advertising revenues came from digital platforms last year,
• 6 of 10 tablet users polled admit their device has fully replaced print media for them,
• 30% of tablet users admit spending more time reading news than they used to spend before purchasing a tablet,
• A vast majority of tablet users say they prefer a tablet over traditional PCs, print media or TV,
• In spite of the rapidly growing number of smartphone and tablet users globally, the advertising revenues dropped from USD $128 billion in 2007 to USD $76 billion in 2011. North America accounts for 72% of the decline in the worldwide value of newspaper advertising, while Western Europe has managed to ease this decline in recent years,
• The tablet revolution is already here, with 19% of 2 – 5 year olds in the UK being able to use some mobile apps and only 9% of these very kids being able to tie their shoelaces,
• 384 million Europeans go online for 29.8 hours per month, according to comScore,
• Mobile penetration in Europe is 42% versus 39% in the United States (comScore),
• In the UK, there are 26 million smartphone users, which marks a 50% increase year on year (comScore),
• 10.5% of all traffic in the UK comes from mobile and tablet devices (comScore),
• Html5 is believed to be the “lingua franca” of the digital newspaper development, as it’ll allow bypassing Apple publishing restrictions, keeping valuable customer data, staying responsive and catching additional audience share,
• The key to today’s newspaper industry is how to manage content for different media platforms and how to keep a media product fresh and marketable, according to Mark Challinor from Telegraph Media Group,
• The newspaper business needs consumer obsessed people with new skill sets, especially the technical ones,
• “Innovation for innovation’s sake is a disease of many newsrooms these days,” says David Boardman, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President at Seattle Times,
• “The new definition of news is anything you didn’t know 15 minutes ago – or even 15 seconds,” says newspaper designer Mario Garcia. Speaking about the mobile app design for newspapers or journals, Garcia says: “It is crucial to remember that the finger must be kept entertained, and this means pop-ups, like a children’s book. A photograph shouldn’t just have a caption, you should be able to click on elements for more information, or for a video. The content flow cannot be purely linear, it has to be fluid.”

The key conclusion made at the 64^th World Newspaper Congress is that it is a must for publishers and print media to be able to create, market and monetize user friendly and sustainable digital solutions within the next year in order to retain and expand their readership base and brand awareness. However, print and digital forms still can co-exist successfully as long as they augment each other. So, “interactive paper” is a new buzz word to catch on. Claire Boonstra from Layar, the world’s largest augmented reality platform that has been developing their apps with Ciklum in Ukraine since 2010, presented an exciting live demo of how to create a cool interactive paper with the Layar Creator.

About Viktor Bogdanov, PR Manager at Ciklum (53 Posts)

Viktor has 7+ years of online marketing and PR experience and specializes in content management, copywriting, tech blogging, market research, SMM and screenwriting.