WAN-IFRA Study Tour to Visit Los Angeles, Silicon Valley Areas

The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) will conduct its New Revenues and New Channel Innovations Study Tour in the Los Angeles and Silicon Valley areas, Nov. 7-12, with the objective of inspiring revenue-making strategies with product and channel development.

Among southern California stops on the tour: the Orange Country Register, transformed into a audience-focused company; Variety.com and DailyMe.com, teaming on new revenues with targeted advertising, e-commerce and targeted content using DailyMe technology; Los Angeles Times, re-inventing itself with new products and new channels; DemandMedia, developing and monetizing video content and user-generated vertical content, including Livestrong.com and eHow.com.

In addition to visiting several operations, the Silicon Valley leg of the tour will feature two panel discussions. A panel to look at new revenue models and new forms of advertising will include speakers from vertical, white-label ad network Adify.com, smartphone and iPad advertising campaign producer PointRoll.com, USAToday.com and Gannett newspapers, which sell digital advertising and cross-media campaigns, and targeted advertising technology provider and ad network cXense.com.

The other panel will take up New Channels for New Revenue, including worldwide seller of mobile and Internet daily coupon deals GroupOn.com, private mobile social network Plum/Nokia, public mobile social network FourSquare.com, and blog ad content provider and ad network FederatedMedia.com.

Stops in Silicon Valley will include: Yahoo headquarters, to discuss initiatives with news companies, including behavioral targeted ads, Yahoo content and advertising network, Flikr photo and video content, Yahoo Mobile and Yahoo News; Flipboard.com, a social media magazine for iPads, with social media functionality; Hewlett Packard's innovative departments, such as MagCloud.com, a targeted magazine network, the HP Slate; digital printing innovations, and new product opportunities in print; Stanford University, for an evening with Knight International News Fellows and an executive from Twitter, who will speak about building reach with social media; Google headquarters, to discuss Google innovations and opportunities for news publishers, including AdWords, Android, Google News, AdMob, Google Maps and a variety of APIs.

For more information contact Martha Stone, director of the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Project, at 847.778.9806 or martha.stone@wan-ifra.org, or visit www.wan-ifra.org/studytours.