Two digital events planned for next year have been canned: WAN-Ifra has postponed its February International Audience Conference, while Messe Dusseldorf has cancelled its April digi:media event.

Lack of visitor support is blamed for the decision to shelve the Dusseldorf event, while WAN-Ifra says shortage of time and resources drove the decision to postpone IAC.

The International Audience Conference was to have been held in Paris from February 21-22. It was to have focussed on helping news publishers boost revenue through increased audience engagement.

Key topics included gaining and understanding data, growing audiences across platforms, communities, social media, and how to turn occasional readers into loyal customers.

The postponement comes in the context of restructuring at WAN-Ifra, following management changes. “In order to create a really interesting and valuable conference on audience development, it was decided to focus on the planning at a later time next year,” says events programme manager Claudia Wilke.

The digi:media 2013 trade fair, which was to have been held from April 10-12, has been cancelled, with organisers saying industry participation was unlikely to be “sufficient to truly mirror the sector”.

It had planned a solution-oriented congress and trade show platform covering crossmedia communications for all media channels, following a success in 2011.

Director Manuel Mataré says cancellations and cutbacks of exhibition space in the trade fair, and the “pronounced reserve” of representative players forced the decision.

“It was a hard decision for us to cancel, but given the current state of registrations and the unlikely prospect of a radical turnaround in registration patterns, it was time to pull the ripcord”, he says.

Organisers are considering whether it will still be possible to present other elements of the planned content.