Business Services TO MEMBERS

WAN-IFRA Services was established in 2014 with the mission to be the Knowledge Hub for the news media industry and leverage that knowledge to provide professional services to WAN-IFRA members. 2017 was both an exciting and challenging time as well. All WAN-IFRA projects had the twin objectives of creating value for members and simultaneously making a positive financial contribution to the organization.

WAN-IFRA's Knowledge Hub is a strategic framework to organize and collaborate across departments, while focusing on the needs of our members. We short list the most important topics under the four pillars – transformation, content, revenue and print. The short list is created through in-depth discussions with various forums, experts and members. The team defines a set of actions for each topic, such as creation of a report, a microsite with interviews with experts, case studies, training modules on the topic, personal advisory services, forming expert working groups and sessions at various conferences around the world. This allows WAN-IFRA to bring scale to the member offerings and ensure close collaboration among its regional offices in Frankfurt, Chennai, Singapore and Mexico City.

Insights and Publications

In 2017, WAN-IFRA published 17 research reports. With 4,900 downloads of the various reports during the year he reports on “World Press Trends”, “Making Money with Facebook” and the series on “Smart Data” were particularly well received. Two print related reports and a 279-page guide on optimized paper handling were produced with the support of the World Printers Forum community.

This record year has been exceptionally well received by WAN-IFRA members. In 2017, we have experienced a strong increase in numbers of reports downloaded by members over the year. On that respect, 2017 has also been a record-year, with a 40% increase Year-on-Year, since we started tracking digital reports downloads in 2013.

Download the WAN-IFRA reports in our online library: wan-ifra.org

The newsletters continue to deliver attractive and relevant content to the different target groups, with higher opening and viewing rates compared to industry averages. The team also brought out two issues of the printed magazine, with the Congress edition in May focusing on Business and Strategy and the Expo edition in September focusing on Technology & Innovation. In 2018, WAN-IFRA research and insights team will be strengthened by the launch of a news Content Studio in India.

Subscribe to WAN-IFRA newsletters by completing the form available at the following link: newsletters.wan-ifra.org

Conferences

2017 saw the launch of Digital Media North America conference in Oct in New York. This completes the portfolio of digital media conference that we do in Asia, India, Europe, Africa and Latin America.

These events are fast becoming the references events in the respective regions and helps us to attract the new digital media executives who didn’t have prior engagement with WAN-IFRA. The Digital Media LatAM held in Buenos Aires, set new records for attendance with 712 participants.

Overall, more than 4,000 media executives from 1,322 companies coming from 93 countries attended the main 14 paid conferences organized by WAN-IFRA from Buenos Aires to Jakarta.

Our calendar of events 2018 is available at the following link: events.wan-ifra.org. Video recordings and incoming webinars calendar are available at events.wan-ifra.org/webinars

Advisory, Training and Skills Development

The Media Management Accelerator, WAN-IFRA’s new e-learning platform was officially launched in June 2017. The certification program offers an immersive and self-paced learning experience. To date, approximatively 3500 users are already registered, and 8 media corporations subscribed to a corporate service. WAN-IFRA believes that this initiative will be a game changer on how high-quality skills development programs are delivered on a cost-effective basis to news media companies across the globe.

Beyond its many media development programmes as part of its Media Freedom activities (see previous chapter), WAN-IFRA also organised a number of training programs to support the news media in developing the skill needed for a digital future. The Indian and Asian team trained 336 executives by organizing 31 training programs. LataAM conducted its first training program in 2017 and expects to increase this next year.

WAN-IFRA has created a panel of senior news media experts to assist and guide news media companies in their transformation process. Integrated in WAN-IFRA’s Global Advisory team led by Nick Tjaardstra, WAN-IFRA’s experts have particularly deep knowledge and experience in reader revenue and digital subscriptions, branded content, executive coaching and newsroom efficiency.

You can learn more about our Advisory Services and areas of expertise at the following link : expertise.wan-ifra.org

eRev EXECUTIVE programme

Ten WAN-IFRA member companies currently participate to eRev, an exclusive, invitation-only international network of top publishers who meet twice a year to gain insights and share experiences on digital revenue strategy. The meetings include visits to key market players, moderated discussions, workshops and exchange of best practices.

In 2017, the group met in Brussels, Antwerp, Frankfurt and San Francisco for highly practical expert- led discussions on optimising subscription revenue, optimising paid products and monetising Facebook. For 2018, the group agreed to focus completely on reader revenue topics - i.e. every aspect in driving new digital subscriptions - from audience segmentation and pricing, to Facebook subscriptions and content that converts.

Contact Nick Tjaardstra, Director Global Advisory at WAN-IFRA to learn more about services provided to WAN-IFRA members. nick.tjaardstra@wan-ifra.org or visit https://expertise.wan-ifra.org/

Awards

In 2017, WAN-IFRA’s Digital Media Awards became truly global with the introduction of the North American Awards. This awards program attracted 765 entries, a 70% increase y-o-y, including a record-breaking award participation doming from Latin America - with 111 projects (up from 70 last year). The newly introduced awards management software will make the submission and evaluation process more efficient.

The individual winners of the European, Asian, Middle Eastern, Indian, African, North America and LATAM Digital Media will be judged in final face-off at the World Digital Media Awards. These awards recognise publishers who have created groundbreaking digital products that engage readers while growing their online business. From among the winners of the regional 2017 awards, the worldwide winners were selected and celebrated at the Expo in Berlin.

The ICQC (International Color Quality Club) competition held every second year encourages high quality printing and to date has attracted 125 entries, an indication that print quality and standardization is still a high priority for many of our members. Asian Media Awards in its 16^th year, continues to be the most prestigious recognition of excellence in the region. 410 entries competed in the seven categories.

Visit our Awards dedicated website at the following link: events.wan-ifra.org/awards

IFRA / DCX EXPO

In 2017, WAN-IFRA entered into a joint venture agreement with Børding Messe, based in Mannheim to organize and manage the former World Publishing Expo.

The strategic decision of creating a specific, Digital Content Expo, to cater to the digital publishing marketplace was implemented this year. The print part of Expo was renamed IFRA Expo. The two expo’s were run simultaneously in parallel halls.

WAN-IFRA keeps control of the content of the two conferences, Print World and Digital World at the Expo. In 2017, the Influential exhibitors such as Ferag and KBA returned to the show. The print exhibitors were quite happy with the event and quality of the visitors.

With nearly 5000 visits (25% more than last year) and 181 exhibitors on hand, the increased participation is a solid signal that the event resonates with this industry and holds promise for expansion. With more than 100 speakers on four stages and the array of suppliers on hand – from startups to established players across the multimedia spectrum – visitors had a plethora of opportunities to engage and network with the industry’s leading innovators.

New this year was the launch of a Startup Park. With more than 30 young tech entrepreneurs, DCX is getting digital. In 2018, WAN-IFRA will enhance its capacity to bridge new talents and legacy publishers, advance quickly the best solutions to the market by introducing further matchmaking capacities alongside the Startup Park initiative.

WORLD EDITORS FORUM

12-MONTH HIGHLIGHTS

An in-depth debate around the role of social media in democracy has become very important. In 2017, WAN-IFRA and the World Editors Forum established a specialist group to tap our members experience with platforms and get a measure of their relations with the tech giants. We want to understand what’s working and what’s not - and what you, as an industry expert think could be done. More than 150 media executives from 50 countries have already joined us and are participating in this vital group. It will engage in an in-depth debate about the role of Facebook in modern democracy and collect and share information and opinion from key media players around this subject.

Our objectives

Be at the forefront of analysis and understanding of the emerging trends.
Be at the forefront of concerted collaboration with news-publishers around the world.
Engage in an in-depth debate about the role of social networks in modern democracy.
Collect information and opinion from key media players around this subject.
Provide regular snapshots (i.e. in the form of regularly published short reports etc.) about the evolutions in the area.

We believe that cooperation and collective action is needed and we encourage WAN-IFRA members to join the conversation and apply to our international expert panel.

World Printers Forum

The World Printers Forum (WPF) is WAN-IFRA’s community for printing and production executives and related technology vendors. In 2017, the team completed the Optimized Paper Handling and Logistics (OPHAL) project and delivered two reports on Print-Online performance gap and High Value print production. The International Color Quality Club competition for 2017-2018 has attracted 120 entries from printing plants and will be managed out of the Research and Material Testing Centre in Chennai.

visit the World Printers Forum website

Chief Digital Officers REGIONAL FORUM

With the accelerating move to digital, WAN-IFRA is taking proactive steps to engage the new breed of digital executives joining the media industry. The association launched a specific CDO Forum for this community in APAC region. The forum has met three times and was instrumental in the formation of premium publisher networks for digital inventory.

world press trends

MEDIA MANAGEMENT ACCELERATOR E-LEARNING PROGRAMME

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