10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
(New York time)

Master Class moderator

Earl J. Wilkinson
Executive Director and CEO, International News Media Association (INMA)

Key themes for this module

• What do you want data to achieve for your company?
• Where does data sit organisationally?
• Where is data in the culture of your company? Where do you want it to be?
• What KPIs or benchmarks or signals might you share that would help peer publishers?
• How are you democratizing access to data?
• The path to use data for more automation
• Where emergence of privacy and security sits with data strategy
• What are the practicalities of getting from where you were to where you want to be from people, mindset, and skill sets perspectives?
• What you need more of and less of in your data lake

Today's case studies

The CEO’s Perspective: Data’s Role in Torstar’s Transformation
Three years ago, Torstar was a valued Canadian brand rich in journalism and poor in data. To unlock recurring subscription revenue and high-performing advertising, it needed a data backbone to elevate customer signals, become smarter at subscriber acquisition and retention, and use first-party data to move past a likely (third-party) cookieless future. In this session, learn how Torstar made data its unique superpower, the organisation that had to be built, the people that populated the organisation, and how to leverage data beyond the core. Learn more about the urgent need for automation acceleration given the direction of the news industry and where privacy and security sits with their strategy.
John Boynton, CEO, Torstar, Canada

How Schibsted Media Makes Data Actionable
Schibsted’s commitment to “data as the new oil” started prior to today’s business objectives of subscription sales, engagement, and digital advertising. Catch up to the Schibsted data story and see how they are democratisating access to data to enable the business and make every employee the best analyst they can be. How do they balance the desire to make their individual news brands autonomous via data while centralising common efforts that can empower subscriptions and advertising? What does it take to get analysts and engineers as close to the business as possible? How to integrate tools to allow people and systems to make data-driven decisions? Where does Schibsted’s long path to personalisation sit today? This high-level presentation, punctuated by use cases, will address data pipelines, data warehouses, and visualization tools — along with what constitutes success with data today and in the coming years.
Ludwig Krokstedt, Head of Media Insights, Schibsted Media

Mediahuis’ Data Journey: Pragmatic, Influence, and Scale
The data journey for Belgium-based Mediahuis is taking the company to the precipice of success on multiple fronts. They are smart about why and how to use algorithms and KPIs – fewer reports, more metrics that lead to action. They are aiming to use data-driven approaches more and more throughout the company, and they are democratising access to data at a high rate. They prefer pragmatism about the parameters of personalisation vs. segmentation. And as Mediahuis expands internationally, they are now scaling what they have learned the past five years. In this session, learn more about the strategic direction of Mediahuis with data — and what comes next.
Trui Lanckriet, Group Data & Insights Director, Mediahuis

10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
(New York time)

Key themes for this module

• What steps need to be taken to get to true personalisation?
• Authenticated audiences: best practices to register and log in
• What zero-party data can creatively be captured and how is it used
• Differentiating between subscriber and non-subscriber interactions and experiences
• Useful and useless data to inform newsrooms
• How to use data to design your products
• How to use data and algorithms to drive a true one-to-one experience
• Overcoming CMS and presentation layer deficiencies

Today's case studies

Bonnier News Local and Empowering Local Content Decisions Via Data
The intersection of news and audience engagement has become a data firestorm, and Bonnier News Local (formerly MittMedia) is at the center. In this presentation, learn how Bonnier News Local is using a point system when planning the news and how reporters assign points to stories. As editorial resources become scarce, learn more about automation, empowerment tools, software, and protocols — all in a broad effort wrapped around simplicity and scale. How does Bonnier News Local, often with smaller news brands producing 20+ articles per day, produce the right content for the right audiences? What is the balancing act between using the scale of a group like Bonnier News Local and de-centralising to make local decisions?
Robin Govik, Director of Development, and Mattias Pehrsson, Head of Editorial Development, Bonnier News Local

How Froomle and Mediahuis Achieve Impactful Personalisation
Despite a general consensus that personalisation is key and high ambitions in the area of personalisation are being put forward by many, today most news media companies struggle to achieve a significant impact with personalisation. Typically, less than 5% of all Web site, app, and e-mail postions are personalised. Personalisation is limited to designated zones receiving almost no traffic. Personalised article recommendation on high traffic pages are shown at the bottom of a page, getting very few impressions. And newsrooms are unhappy with the quality of recommendations. In this session, learn how Froomle and Mediahuis achieve high impact with personalisation.
Koen Verstrepen, CEO, Froomle

Personal and Personalised: How Onet Is Building Tomorrow’s Media With Technology
News media success is increasingly about creating a stronger and deeper connection with audiences — which requires more personalised experiences which requires substantial changes in the editorial process and investments in technology. Onet is a digital news brand reaching 23 million users monthly in Poland and personalizes content for 51 user segments using AI. In this session, learn how Onet is boosting user engagement and increasing time spent on-platform and returning users through continuously fine-tuned adaptation of content presented on the Web site based on user preferences. This session will look at how technology and the right KPIs are aiding Onet’s journey towards personalisation and user loyalty.
Jerzy Gulczyński, Managing Director, Ring Publishing/Ringier Axel Springer Poland

Axel Springer's Latest Editorial Data Innovation: Automated SEO Title Generation
Germany’s Axel Springer has made significant investments in data — from the technology to people — in recent years, punctuated by building its own content management system that has become integral to is value chain — especially its BILD and Die Welt editorial departments. In this session, learn how these investments have manifested themselves in terms of data visualisation, a monetisation gateway for subscriptions and advertising, and now sophisticated activities around automated SEO title generation. One of the company’s leading data scientists will take INMA members into a hands-on, practical look at Axel Springer's new SEO title generation project.
Sarah Lück, Data Scientist, Axel Springer

10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
(New York time)

Key themes for this module

• How third-party cookie disappearance is impacting what data gets shared with advertisers
• First-party data applications (i.e., content consumption) to advertising sales
• The emergence of creative audience segments
• Inside Google’s privacy sandbox and the potential impact for publishers
• What contextual advertising starts to look like in the advertising mix
• How to build data that is more precise and automated for higher performance with advertisers
• How to close the gap with Facebook and Google

Today's case studies

Behind News Corp Australia’s Audience Targeting and Campaign Activation Platform
News Connect is News Corp Australia’s audience-targeting and campaign activation platform designed to leverage first-party data capabilities and work its way out of reliance on the Big Tech platforms. In this session, look closer at a platform that facilitates self-service campaign planning and booking by surfacing relevant audience segments for brands and providing them with insights on what those audiences do across the network. Learn more about the company’s first-party cookie gathering capabilities and plans for an authenticated user base and plans to build up the type and depth of first-party data on customers.
Suzie Cardwell, General Manager Data and Ad Product Solutions, News Corp Australia

SCMP’s First-Party Data Playbook: From Single Sign-Ons and Loyalty to an Activation Platform
When the South China Morning Post announced the Asian media industry’s first proprietary insight and activation platform based on first-party data in May, it the story behind the announcement that intrigued INMA. What was the journey to have a first-party data playbook strong enough for this move? In this session, learn more about SCMP Lighthouse and the journey that leads up to it: single sign-on to track behaviour, building loyal users on-platform, audience segments and reach goals, a unified ID solution, and building a direct relationship with their audience.
Ian Hocking, Vice President, Digital, South China Morning Post

A Tale of 2 Stories: How Gannett Aims to Redefine Advertising Ecosystem
As the world’s largest publishers of news brands, Gannett is staring the pending disappearance of third-party cookies from the advertising ecosystem with a first-party data strategy focused on registration data capture and product data capture that will refuel its local advertising efforts at scale. With Google, Apple, and Amazon pinching out SSPs and depressing CPMs on the programmatic side, Gannett views incentivising audiences to provide data as an opportunity to redefine the advertising ecosystem. On the one hand, the company is pushing a subscription/registration path to continue to build their first-party data to power audience retention and create additional opportunities for their advertisers, while at the same time investing in a strategic effort to build products and community platforms that connect audiences with local businesses and each other, earning loyalty and enabling a personalised consumer revenue business.
Jennifer Frigault, Vice President, Business Intelligence, and Tim Wolfe, Vice President, Revenue Operations, Gannett | USA Today Network