What newspapers are doing to create new advertising revenues and increase market share will be the focus of the 17th World Newspaper  Advertising Conference & Expo, to be held in Zürich, Switzerland, on 22 and 23 February next.

The conference, organised by the World Association of Newspapers and hosted by Swiss Press, will deliver the best advertising ideas and initiatives that are producing new revenues for newspapers.

“As global advertising revenues continue to increase, the conference will focus on the latest ideas and strategies that newspapers are adopting to improve their revenue share and hit ever more challenging targets,” said Donna Pentier, Director of WAN Training & Events.

Sessions include

• Advertising best practices, which will be devoted to the WAN Shaping the Future of the Newspaper report on the most advanced techniques in multi-media advertising sales.
• The reverse sell -- digital to print ads, which examines the emergence of search engines as sellers of newspaper ads. The session will feature a report on the evolving role of search engines in traditional print revenues and examine whether this phenomena poses an opportunity or a threat.
• Ten ways to fail as an advertising director and how to avoid them, a panel discussion among advertising sales professionals on the greatest pitfalls for an advertising director.
• The future of advertising in print, which will provide the perspective from agencies and clients. The session will include advice on how newspapers can influence the decision to include newspapers in the advertising mix, and ideas from a fast moving consumer goods advertiser.
• New readership metrics, which will examine the new tools used for portfolio and multimedia sales and how they give advertisers and newspapers the means to target their audience more accurately.
• Advertising creativity, which will focus on what works and what does not and how newspapers can create better ads to improve response. The session will also include advice on putting a creative proposal together and sell it to top advertising agencies.
• New sales strategies for new products, which will examine the challenges of selling an ever-widening portfolio of products. The session will feature speakers from newspapers that are increasing print and online advertising cooperation, including Altug Acar, advertising coordinator of Hurriyet in Turkey, and Marek Tretyn, head of sales, and Tomasz Jozefacki, head of internet division, of Gaezeta Wyborcza in Poland.

For the evolving conference programme, consult http://www.wan-press.org/zurich2007 .