The Seminar presented the following topics:

“RUner and UAnet” The presenter provided a broad overview of digital media landscape in Russia and Ukraine . The presentation discussed online audience, advertising spending, demographics of users, trends in media usage and changes in media consumption.

“Digital Advertising – Display, Search, Video, Mobile, Social, Affiliate“ The presentation outlined the key differences between traditional print media and digital media advertising, the value chain, essentials for terminology, advertising formats, pricing models, audience measurement, metrics and targeting methods.

“What do you need to know to sell online advertising efficiently?” This section discussed the various elements involved in the sales process and key question to define online sales strategy, e.g.  sales department management, ad inventory, rate card, ad specification, targeting and pricing options, digital ad ecosystem, sales tips & techniques.

“Developing a Digital Marketing Agency”  The presenter focused on his experience with development of digital agency operations as a part of their online publishing activity. The presentation discussed on the initial idea, developing services and portfolio, operations and issues to be faced, and the current plans for growth.

Location: Moscow, Russia

Dates: 1 – 2 April 2014

Attending:  Russian Sales Directors

The ad is a sign of the times for Nepal where owning a mobile phone has become common throughout the country, even on the slopes of Mt.  Everest.  The Nepal Telecommunications Authority reports that in August 2013 mobile phone penetration reached 72% of the population.  Mobile “smart phones” have also contributed to the rapid increase in Internet penetration in Nepal, growing from 19% in 2012 to almost 27% in August of 2013.

Newspaper publishers in Nepal have begun to experience the early stages of their audience’s shifting media habits.  Consequently, Nepal’s Centre for Investigative Journalism hosted “Doing Digital” a seminar for publishing executives trying to understand the challenges and opportunities presented by the digital transition.  MDIF presented “Journalism in the Digital World” a summary of the opportunities and the challenges presented by readers, listeners and viewers all merging to become the digital audience.  The digital transition is clearly a tale of the best of days and the worst of days, the good and the bad.

For publishers, the best of days is epitomized by the wealth of new tools and techniques.  Digital has made online story-telling a new narrative form combining the use of text narrative, audio, video, data and infographics.  Examples discussed included the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize winning “Snowfall” as well as other examples from around the region.  The discussion highlighted two key points.  First, for these multimedia stories to be successful, journalism has to be combined with technology.  Second, the recognition that most publishers do not have the resources of the New York Times and that there are free or low cost tools like Timeline.js to help publishers tell multimedia stories.

Digital technology has also made data journalism a new opportunity for journalists and their audiences to find patterns and stories in the data.  Data journalism like Veja’s Rede de Escandalos provided tangible example of data journalism’s reporting power.   One of Brazil’s oldest news magazines, Veja used its own past reporting on scandals in Brazil to create a unique database of scandals, actors, government bodies involved in each scandal.

Finally, digital technology revolutionizes the way publishers, editors and reporters communicate with their audience.  Digital in many cases has turned audience communication into stories.  India’s website “I Paid A Bribe” website demonstrated how audience engagement and communication can create ongoing coverage of key themes, like corruption.

But publishers attending the seminar also focused on the business models needed to survive the transition. Unfortunately, the discussion of business models presented the challenge facing all digital publishers, where will online revenue come from.  The challenge is acute in countries like Nepal, where audience adoption of online has grown much faster than local advertisers’ transition to online.

During the seminar, MDIF discussed several examples of revenue streams that publishers should evaluate as they begin to actively publish online.  Since online advertising remains a very small revenue opportunity in Nepal, the discussion focused on enterprise and project social funding services, often called crowdfunding.  Crowdfunding services have expanded greatly with regional specialists, like Africa’s mobile fundraising platform M-changa or industry specialists like IndieVoices, which focuses on independent media and journalism projects. In addition to crowdfunding, syndication and content expense sharing partnerships were also discussed where two organizations partner to share the cost and potentially the revenue of a digital reporting project.  Finally, different subscription and paid content models were presented.  Though many of the Nepali publishers believed that the technology to easily collect revenue from their online audience was not yet available in Nepal.

Nepali media and media in any region undergoing a rapid digital transition face both opportunities and challenges.  Digital reporting and story telling tools have created a whole ways of communicating a story.  But, these new tools require training, technology and infrastructure support.  None of these are free.  Revenues from advertisers typically lag the audience’s move to digital platforms, creating a gap in digital’s ability to generate revenue.  This leaves publishers who move online with the challenge of how to generate some new revenue to support these new requirements.  CIJ Nepal’s seminar for regional publishers created a foundation for an active discussion and experimentation with both the opportunities and challenges facing Nepal’s traditional print media.

• The Seminar presented the following topics:“Technology Platforms & Decision Criteria”.  The presentation outlined the key decisions involved in selecting and maintaining web platforms.  The presenter discussed the pros and cons of in-house versus outsourced development as well as proprietary versus open source software.  Detailed decision criteria are recommended.  Because of the importance of the Content Management System, the presentation closes with a comparison of the three open source CMS platforms – Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla.
KB Seminars: Working with Technology – Platforms; 10/13 from MDIF
• “Product Management Roles and Responsibilities”.  The presentation focused on the role of product management as a ‘translator’ between the needs of users and technology’s ability to deliver web products to meet these needs.  In particular, the seminar outlined key elements in a business plan and product specification.  Examples of online and software products used to support the product development and bug tracking processes are also included.
KB Seminars: Working with Technology – Product Management; 10/13 from MDIF
• “Opportunities in Online Advertising”.  The presenter detailed the elements of online advertising standards including pixel dimensions, file size and other graphic requirements.  The discussion outlined new trends in online advertising targeting including behavioral and contextual targeting.  The rapid emergence of real-time bidding or programmatic buying and its key components is also introduced with specific examples and a summary of companies working in the Russian/Ukrainian market.
KB Seminars: Working with Technology – Advertising; 10/13 from MDIF
• “Development Metrics: Measuring Your Site for Improvement”.  This section presented a model for online metrics including examples of data sources and calculations.  Three types of metrics are discussed.  Foundation metrics provide basic audience behavior (visits, page views) and audience descriptions (location, gender, etc.). Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are discussed in terms of developing measures that assist in making business and content decisions to optimize websites for traffic or revenue.  Finally, tactical measures like A/B testing and heat maps are introduced as techniques to acquire specific information to make tactical decisions about a website.
KB Seminars: Working with Technology – Metrics; 10/13 from MDIF
• “Website Hosting Fundamentals”.  The Seminar presented the key types of hosting, their different uses and recommended criteria for selecting hosting methods and vendors.

The Seminar aimed to provide media managers with decision-making and management techniques for working with technology including content management, advertising and ad serving, and metrics systems.

Location: Moscow, Russia

Dates: 9 – 10 October 2013

Attending:  Russian and Ukrainian Technology, Product and Commercial Managers

• Day 1 – Audience Development.    Day 1 focused on the two main techniques needed to build audience online search engine optimization and search engine marketing and social media optimization and social media marketing.  Special emphasis was placed on the use of Facebook and Twitter given the related importance of social media to Indonesian online users.

• Day 2 – Revenue Development. Day 2 focused on revenue development, in particular display advertising trends and standards, pricing approaches and the importance and structure of online media kits and rate cards.  The day ended with a discussion of the structure and role of advertising networks and the most important advertising networks available in Southeast Asia.

The seminar was designed to lay a foundation for audience and revenue development for KBR68H’s new online portal.

Location: Jakarta, Indonesia

Dates: 30 April – 1 May 2013

Attending:  Sales, Marketing and News Managers from PortalKBR.com

The seminar presented the following topics:

• “Market Overview”. This section provided an overview of the online classifieds market with special focus on recent developments in the Russian and Ukrainian markets. The overview also discussed current trends in global online classified and directory development and presented strategic models for local media to participate in the online classified market.
•  “Business Models: Classified and Directory”. This section presented the common technical and design features common to most online classified sites and then presented a staged approach to building revenue models.
• “Listings and Sales”. A discussion of techniques needed to build the listings volume for an online classified site.
• “Audience/Marketing”. A discussion of SEO and other techniques to generate audience to an online classified site.

The goal of the seminar was to create a base of understanding of the trends in the online classified market and the potential impacts on attendee’s existing classified business as well as provide some tools and techniques to help build listings volume and audience for attendees’ existing classified sites.

Location: Moscow, Russia

Dates: 1 -2 April 2013

Attending:  Russian and Ukrainian media executives

The Seminar presented the following topics:

• “Online Advertising Market Overview”.  An overview of the dynamics of the Russian and Ukrainian online advertising market including market size and growth. The training focused on presenting the standards for online display advertising as well as an overview of standard pricing models.  A short discussion of ad serving systems was also included.
• “Sales Teams Organization and Motivation”.  A discussion of different approaches to sales organization and motivation as well as a discussion of integrated, independent, and hybrid online sales teams.
• “Advertising Networks”.  Training provided an overview of the structure of advertising networks as well as a discussion of the pros and cons of participating in advertising networks like Yandex Direct and Google AdSense.
• “Measuring Success – Google Analytics”.  An overview of the fundamentals of using Google Analytics to measure traffic growth and understand basic audience demographics and behavior.
• “Online Classifieds – Local Opportunities”.  Online classifieds often represent the largest category of traditional local media advertising and are often the first category to move online.  The training focused on the elements of the online classified market and techniques of managing the transition from print to online classifieds.

The goal of the seminar was to provide a common base of knowledge about the opportunities in online advertising both display and classifieds.  The seminar also encouraged discussion among participants about the pros and cons of different online advertising techniques and the potential impact on the traditional advertising business.

Location: Moscow, Russia

Dates: 27 – 28 September 2012

Attending:  Russian and Ukrainian Media Advertising Sales and Marketing Executives

The business seminar focused specifically on the unique aspects of building an online outlet for a radio station or network. The training included:

• “Developing a Strategic Plan”. A framework for building a strategic plan for an online media business. Special emphasis was given to presenting different models for an audio-driven online site.
• “Building Audience”. A broad overview of the techniques needed to build an online audience including streaming audio directories, iTunes submission, search engine optimization, and social media marketing.
• “Revenue Opportunities”. A discussion of different revenue opportunities including donation campaigns and fund drives, advertising including Google Adsense, and content sales and syndication.
• “Measurement”. A hands-on demonstration of the fundamentals of Google Analytics.

The goal of the seminar was to provide radio stations, radio producers, and radio networks with the foundation to develop sustainable online web sites for their radio operations.

Location: Siem Reap, Cambodia

Dates: 2 -3 May 2012

Attending:  Affiliate Members of the Asia Calling Network, representing radio broadcasters and online media from Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Pakistan, Nepal, and Afghanistan.

The seminar presented the following topics:

• “Trends in Online Business Development”. An overview of new international online media developments with a focus on online products and services, which specifically deliver local audiences and markets. In particular, the seminar looked at specialized directories, local aggregation and specialized social media developments as opportunities for new online product development.
• “Search Engine Optimization”. An overview of the fundamentals of SEO for both Google and Yandex.
• “Social Media Marketing”. An overview of the fundamentals of leading social media platforms Twitter and Facebook including step-by-step instructions around how to establish a social media profile, how to post to the profile and a discussion of the benefits of social media to traffic growth.
• “Measuring Success – Google Analytics”. An overview of the fundamentals of using Google Analytics to measure traffic growth and understand basic audience demographics and behavior.
• “Planning & Financing Your Business”. A discussion of the key inputs to a business plan including estimating audience, revenue and expenses.

The goal of the seminar was to provide senior executives and media managers with the fundamentals to understand the opportunities available and the techniques required to capture the local online media opportunity.

Location: Moscow, Russia
Dates: 19-20 March 2012
Attending: Russian and Ukrainian media executives