Number of investments in startups in Israel rises very quickly. The country becomes a strong startup hub. Just like all over the world, the move to digital media with strong technology focus can be also seen in Israel.

Key trends:

• publishers are becoming brands
• video, video, video
• search for new monetization methods: e-commerce, new forms of advertising, better targeting
• personalization
• growing value of the creative

Video is the new wave: low cost to produce, rising generation is much happier to consume video than text.

Tablets are also a great area of interests due to their beautiful UI and algorithmic content aggregation, what is nothing else but social, personal, and collaborative filtering.

ialbums is an example of an Israeli application for tablets. It works in a similar way to Flipboard, but it aggregates content from different music albums: pictures, lyrics etc. It aggregates the content from the publishers to the final user. iAlbums is a cool app showing useful and nerdy facts about the artists and music users listen to.

Content discovery and recommendations from Israel:

• also algorithmics but focused on site
• news videos movies
• new type of revenue stream
• publishers are advertisers and advertisers are publishers
• improves metrics.

Example – Outbrain application, very strong in US.  It is helping readers discover interesting content.

Smart TV is the next big trend in Israel. They are waiting for Apple TV, although the iPad already paved the way. Unlike iPad, the big CE players have a lot to lose (and they are not great at SW). The TV is going to be something like a big iPad on users’ wall.

Appside is a good example of a TV app. It works like an appstore, but consists of videos and TV content. At the moment it has mainly games now but sports and other publisher content will follow.

Video and video advertising are the final big trends. Everything in Israeli digital media is moving to video. Automatic video creation / edition makes it possible. There are new types of video ads: overlay, personalization, in-scene. Simultaneously aggregation of all trends is noticeable: iPad, smart TV, recommendations.

Example of an application: eyeview

Ben Barokas is the President & Co-Founder of AdMeld, USA

What do publishers do in order to take advantage of all the strategies advertisers put into place.

About AdMeld:

• the only SSP founded by publishing veterans
• more than 500 premium publishing clients
• 45 billion transactions per month
• more than 120 team members worldwide
• just acquired by Google

They are serving the world’s top publishers. In order to understand what AdMeld is all about, you should watch this video:

This is how the narrative of advertising market looked like before:

• 2000 – ad networks emerge. Created a large marketed by providing advertising solutions to advertisers.
• In 2007 the ad network daisy chain arrived. It brought: sub-optimal revenues, and extreme labor intensivity. It was also difficult to integrate into new networks.
• 2007-mid 2009 – ad network optimisation
• mid 2009 late 2010 – RTB, data and the SSP.
• late 2010 – late 2011 private exchange
• Since 2011 it is time for real time unified auction.

We are witnessing a dramatic growth of programmatic buying. Publishers need to have an infrastructure that can help them take advantage of those revenues.

Audience analytics for publishers:

• See how your audience looks like from the buers’ perspective
• audience analytics powered by top 3rd party data providers
• see what individual RTB (real time bidding) buyers and advertisers are biddin on specific audience segments
• Execute existing direct sold opportunities, find new ones
• deliver audience segments already sold by your team
• create and deliver new inventory packages

Value of private exchange inventory: premium brand-safe content, targeted impressions, dynamic controls.

What makes Admeld private exchange unique:

• ability to deliver programmatic advertising in brand safe environments across premium publishers. Designed for advertisers to directly engage with publishers.
• exclusive advertiser-to-publisher inventory access to the most sought after highly engaged audiences

AdX and Admeld are integrating to help publishers harness more demand and foster more competition for inventory than other offerings.

As a publishing community we need to be much more data centric.

Moving forward requires:

• importance of hight-touch services
• importance of traditional yield management
• enhanced controls

Gordon McLeod is the President of Krux, USA

Publishing in a data driven world

Krux helps publishers detect and prevent skimming and theft of consumer cookie data. They make web pages faster and website managers more efficient. Krux helps publishers representing over 200 million users worldwide create more valuable advertising, more relevant content, and more effective commerce.

All media are becoming addressable , marketers demand targeting and now value it over placement and price. As a result data-driven, audience-focused operators dominate the display market (the big 4 from day one).

There has been a seismic shift in digital sales: from direct to indirect, from content and context to audience targets.

The good news is that publishers’ data is very valuable. Bad news: others are taking advantage of it at publishers’ expense.

Here’s what Krux found out:

• 200% increase in collection volume per publisher page since 2010
• 82% of all data collection on publisher sites is conducted by 3rd parties
• 70% of that cactivity was ushered to the page by someone other than the publisher
• What does it lead to: data leakage, competitive products from your own data, slower page loads, privacy risk

The data driven future: every publisher’s next opportunity resides at the intersection of revenue and privacy. As far as revenues are concerned the key is to take advantage of horizontal and vertical audiences of scale. The revenues are: ad sales, commerce and subscription revenues fund products, content and audience investments. Privacy is based upon understanding your users, protecting their privacy and preferences, primacy of 1st party activity and self-regulation.

All publishers must reestablish their identity, make the most of consumer access, and invest in a new class of infrastructure:
1. Market identity:

• brand content, environment, and reach matter more than ever
• but only a truly differentiated gateway role will ensure that publishers survive and thrive

2. Consumer privacy:

• trusted consumer relationships are your true asset and your business model must be premised on privacy and preference
• deliver more valuable web experiences that are always cool and never creepy, and profits will surely follow

3. Business infrastructure:

• cloud scale and big data flexibilitywhat were differentiators are table stakes today – media and technology are collapsing on one another
• embrace new models of collection and connection, and apply new analytic and algorithmic techniques with the help of the machines.

So the publishers should take defensive steps to reassert control over your core audience and media assets.

Close the back door, and:

• monitor and audit all data collection
• assert your privacy policy
• assess existing relationships (short term benefits and long term costs)

Andy Seibert is the President of Dow Jones Content Lab & SmartMoney, USA.

Revenue for Dow Jones has to be incremental, efficient, profitable, repeatable. With right audience and right sales people publishers will be able to convince the advertisers to spend money on their media.

Dow Jones is a big content company 2100 editorial people, 59 countries. They produce 19 000 pieces a day of content for the integrated platforms, distributed into various channels.

Lines of Dow Jones’ business:

• B2B: Dow Jones Newswire, Factiva
• B2C: WSJ, Barron’s, AllThingsD, SmartMoney, MarketWatch
• Custom Content: Content Lab

Content Lab: what they do is look across all great things around all media they have, and aggregate and repackage it. They develop integrated marketing programs across a variety of channels: print, web, mobile, social, video, iPad and tablet apps. They apply the best practices of their sister divisions – which are among the world’s strongest brands, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, SmartMoney and MarketWatch – to their clients’ custom programs.

The question was whether they can turn those talents into revenue generating activities? They are known for topic expertise and editorial quality. They are also known for innovation.

Main objective was to create programme to meet client’s objective. Client’s content + new custom content + branded content. In other words, they produce communications in a variety of formats. They produce for their clients: e-newsletters, print newsletters, videos, infographics, booklets, and seminars.

Dow Jones quickly became a leader in on-demand publishing by:

• using customer data to create relevant communications
• seamlessly integrated program across print, electronic, and online distribution channels
• producing communications for over 8000 client customers and 10 million employees
• improving result 10-30%
• delivering differentiation among competitors

Tips for publisher: ask the right questions, start with a proven successful process, assure quality, and be unique.

Florian Haller is the CEO of Serviceplan, Germany.

Serviceplan, MediaPlus and Plan.net work together as one house of communication (communication agency). They are specialists in areas of 360 d. campaigns, political campaigns, health&marketing, public relations, sponsorships, sales marketing, events, and corporate reputation.

Commumication agencies need innovative and effective access to the target groups. Here is what Florian Haller understands by “innovative and effective”:

1. Innovative and effective means targeted. Strong believers in targeting as a media channel of the future. Advertising should match users’ interests.
2. Innovative and effective means relevant. Relevant in this context is learning about users and at the same changing the advertising offer towards the users.
3. Innovative and effective means impactful. Advertising needs to have a measurable effect on the users/readers.
4. Innovative and effective means involving. Advertising agencies and content producers must cooperate on a much closer level. This means bringing special solutions for the advertisers: communities, games, events, and so on.
5. Innovative and effective means convergent. Interested in existing on as many platforms as possible, both online and offline.
6. Innovative and effective means measurable. Internet is the most measurable media among all platforms available: branding effect, response rate, readership, ROI – everything in Internet is measurable.

Dan Hickey is the SVP, Digital Engagement, Meredith, USA

What matters most to 75 million women: her family, her home, her self.

Meredith is a company that evolved from a custom publishing company to a regular publishing house. Meredith has 45 million unique users monthly and 800 million pageviews.

The digital growth strategies for Meredith are:

• migrating the consumers relationships online
• extending brands across the web
• embracing social media
• launching interactive editions

Meredith produces many mobile apps, each produced by focusing on what individual consumers need. Also its tablet editions get a lot of attention.

• Meredith understands how important for publishers is the migration to digital. Today’s consumer uses technology to enhance every aspect of his/her life by:
• searching to rapidly find information, education, and entertainment
• accesing information through mobile, wherever he/she is
• time shifting and watching web video
• comparing shopping online offers to find bargains, discounts, offers, deals, and services

All of that creates possibilities for Meredith brands to enhance their value proposition to advertisers and consumers.

Social has achieved a critical mass of users and represents an opportunity for them to accelerate their site scale and revenue growth. Social media have a dual impact on traffic. Not only can they result in direct traffic to the sites, but they can also impact the natural search ranking signicantly.

The majority of advertising requests are calling for a major push on building a brands Facebook presence. Having a strong Facebook presence, and the skills to execute social campaigns, it will allow publishers to win more proposals.

And while social commerce is small today, it is clear that in the nearest future social will play a significant role in how commerce is done on the web. Having a strong social presence will put publishers in the position to capture future commerce revenue.

Social media are an opportunity to scale and diversify for publishers. It is as important as email and search discoverability of the content online. It is an opportunity to accelerate the growth through further expansion in social. Finally, it diversifies the traffic composition while accelerationg publishers’ ability to scale.

Meredith has some great social media achievements it can be proud of. Among them there are:

• 2,3 million Facebook fans (total)
• 760 thousand Twitter followers (total)
• Highest sources of social traffic aggregated across sites

Engagement strategies:

• Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm is determining how many of your fans will actually see your posts through the default “Top News” view
• Every post or piece of content is an object. Every object has edges (comment, like, tag, share, click, etc.). Edges that require more user effort rank higher:
• affinity – between user and edge creator
• weight – weight for edge type
• relevancy – time decay factor

The EdgeRank can be checked anytime at edgerankchecker.com which is the unofficial site for Edge Rank scoring.

The engagement stratefy should include a variety od post-types to maximize fans interaction, the Edge Rank, and opportunity for fans to see your posts. How should a

post strategy look like?:

• plan ahead and determine frequency od posting, post types, general schedule
• alter the plan if something relevant/newsy comes in
• consider using a scheduling tool for nights and weekends, if you are not able to post at those times.

1. Social is becoming as important as email and search
2. It is an opportunity to expand the growth by further expansion to social
3. it further diversifies the traffic composition while accelerating the ability to scale

Svida Alisjahbana is the CEO of Femina Group, Indonesia

Facebook is not yet major in Indonesia. 43 million users in Asia visit Facebook daily. Twitter is no. 1 social media site in Asia with 19 millionusers.

Market has changed:

• everything is happening in real time
• consumer is getting critical

Editor in chief in Femina Group has become Chief Community Officer. His/her responsibility is to create a content that can be played with the community. Not only is all media becoming digital. All media is becoming social.

The strategy is all about: content – community – channel

The audience is growing, but all in all those are growing communities.

Social media is very important to Femina Group. If it was once said thay content is king, in that case the conversation is kingdom.

Tanya Cordrey is the Director of Development in Guardian, UK Guardian has created a new type of app, an embedded app to show other facebook users what we are reading.

There were 3 reasons behind why they did it:
1. they could do this quickly and cheaply
2. they could re-embrace the idea of experimenting within Facebook
3. it was an idea of a new acquisition channel

35.000 people download Guardian app on Facebook daily. What is very interesting, the most interested demographic group is 18-24 year olds.

At first it was very UK-centric. As it has grown, the audience became much more global. From November 2011 the trend has changed, and UK traffic is now smaller than global.

Guardian Facebook Social News App readers are young who don’t read newspapers, 54% 24y and under. Over 700k users.

Digital gives publishers something that print never did – real time data. In future, Guardian may try new features/functionality on Facebook before introducing to their own properties.

This app was just an experiment – they did not know what to expect.

Key takeaways:
Facebook is a sandbox for innovation
Facebook has a high speed of learning
Facebook gives ability to attract new readers

Dr. Jens Müffelmann is the Head of Electronic Media Division, Axel Springer AG, Germany. Internationalization and digitalization have been anchored in the company’s strategy since 2001. They are decisive drivers for the growth of Axel Springer. Extensive investments in digital media since 2008. One investment every 2 weeks for the last 6 years.

At the beginning there was strong issue about German investments, now it’s more international.

4 cases for going international with digital:

1. KaufDA: going highspeed with innovative business model
2. aufeminin.com: growing with a centralized approach /jw/
3. SeLoger utilising expertise for the new growth markets
4. Zanox – expanding from German to European market leader

1. Kauf.da. The business model is the online brochures – they can be researched online but bought offline. It was launched in 2009 and focused on German market at first. December 2011 a subsdiary bonial was launched in France. Now France is the number 1 market for Axel Springer, with strategic relevance and the size of 2 billion Euro.

2. aufeminin shows growing with a centralized approach. It is Europe’s leading women portal, founded in 1999 with headquarters in Paris. Axel Springer axquired it in 2007 with a stake of 82%. Aufeminin is one brand across 13 European countries with 45 million unique visitors.

3. Seloger shows utilizing expertise for the new growth markets. It is a leading real estate portal in France, founded in 1992. Bought by Axel Springer in 2010 with 99,7% stake. It has 4 million unique visitors and listings of 1,1 million. It now expands to market niches and outside France.

4. Zanox is an example of a brand expanding from German to European market leader. Its revenues have grown significantly over the past 4 years outperforming its main European competitor TradeDoubler.

33% of Axel Springer’s revenues are generated abroad. International revenues have grown from 383 million Euro in 2006 to 1 048 million Euros in 2011. Axel Springer is now present in 35 countries, with 25 newspapers and 132 magazines. They have more than 140 online offering and hiring more than 4000 employees. They have grown from no digital revenues in 2006 to 49% digital revenues in 2011. Axel Springer’s vision is to be 50/50 (50% print and 50% digital).

Lessons learnt:

• Do your homework first, then internationalize
• be open, there is just not one mmarket entry strategy
• know the region or know the business. Best, know them both
• think global, act local, and learn
• install a corporate “serve/protect champion”
• expect the unexpected, be flexible
• people, people, people