And perhaps the best start for the event, which opened in Kuala Lumpur this morning came from keynote speaker Wong Siah Ping from ‘local hero’ Star Publications: “We’ve learned our roots are in content, and to exploit technology to be our readers’ home screen,” she says.
The Malaysian publisher’s chief digital business operating officer, she recalled that as print publishers, they had done everything very well, “but the last mile was totally out of our control”.
With digital, the gap had been closed: “We finally know who (our readers) are, what their preferences are, and in a few months we have tens of thousands of them,” she says.
“It’s radically changed the way we do business.”
Wong Siah Ping detailed two technology developments which were driving the change:
• a multiplatform digital edition based on Newspaper Direct technology, which made papers available from Apple’s app store; and
• an augmented reality offering called iSnap, produced in association with Singapore developer Knorex.
AR delivered experiences – including galleries and video – with “the smell of newsprint” for Star readers, and had helped double app downloads from 100,000 and draw advertisers including Shell, Heineken and Toyota. And did so with minimal investment cost; both the e-editions and the AR functions – now delivered from within the Star app – were funded using a revenue share model.
Day one of DMA focused on online and social media, but a strong emphasis was on monetisation with specific contributions from Robert Picard of Oxford University’s Reuters Media Institute, founder of Slovakian cooperative paywall Tomas Bella, and WAN-Ifra’s Stig Norqvist.
And of course, building a website audience in the first place: US search engine optimisation consultant Bill Belew was unequivocal with the message, “I know how to get people to come.” And he energetically ran through a 20-point checklist for online publishers to prove it.
Sometimes, news just happens, and the challenge is how to get a handle on it. The story from Paul Lewis of the UK’s The Guardian on how to relate to social media presented a journalistic angle, while Vincent Sider of BBC Worldwide presented a more commercial approach in the exploitation of social media as a marketing tool.
The conference continues with digital business innovations tomorrow – with the Asian Digital Media Awards in the evening – and Thursday, when the focus is on mobile and tablet publishing. Registration details from the DMA website.