New York, NY (December 8, 2005)Two hundred magazine professionals attended Magazines 24/7:  Leveraging Consumer Magazine Brands in the Digital Age, a sold-out conference hosted by Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) at the American Conference Center in New York City.  The event, designed to identify ways that magazines can harness the power of emerging technologies, will be next be held in spring 2006, it was announced today by Nina Link, President & CEO, MPA.

The program for Magazines 24/7, which was also offered as a live webcast due to overwhelming demand, featured prominent digital leaders as well as emerging magazine digital experts. 

Here are some highlights from the sessions:

Opening Remarks

Nina Link, President & CEO, MPA

Link: Digital extensions of magazines strengthen our print brands and build stronger relationships with readers.  As a logical extension of our brands, digital platforms will allow us to touch our readers every minute of every day, and every day of every week. In other wordsmagazines 24/7.

What Does Digital 2.0 Mean for Magazine Brands?

Keynote: John Battelle, Founder and Chairman, Federated Media Publishing and Author of The Search

Battelle: I dont think magazines are dead, I think theyre moving into a great new phase! Magazines are perfect for a search-driven world. They have authoritative content.

Seizing the Moment: Emerging Digital Technologies

Katherine Sayre, VP, Boston Consulting Group

Sayre: Consumers want content customized to their expectations. Its a tremendous opportunity to bond with the consumerWe have to leverage our combined strengths: content, our community of interests and our strong relationship with advertisers.

How Search Is Changing the 5-Year Plan

Moderator: Jeff Jarvis, Blogger, Buzzmachine.com

Panelists:

Bob Carrigan, President, IDG Communication

Michael Smith, General Manager, Forbes.com

Lauren Wiener, VP, Meredith Interactive

Jarvis: Magazines really are the collection of brand and voice, and an audience gathers around that.

Carrigan: We see a lot of speed daters on our website.  Were getting better at keeping them for a longer relationship through relevant links and related content.

Smith: Video is a huge focus for us. We have multiple production studios, producers and bookers.  And were winning television ad dollars.

Carrigan: Seventy to eighty percent [of our users] are going into article pages from searchesWe treat every page as a home page, pathing users from an article page with lots of relevant content to draw them further into the site.

Wiener, on search engine optimization: Editorial people need to learn that you must link out to get links back.

Translating Your Voice

Moderator: Merrill Brown, former Editor-in-Chief of MSNBC.com, and Founder and Principal

MMB Media LLC

Panelists:

Todd Anderman, President, Dennis Digital

Paul Fichtenbaum, Managing Editor, SI.com

Jaime Pallot, Editorial Director, CondeNet

Anderman: If you look at the fastest growing websites (eBay, Google, MySpace and FaceBook), theyre not beautiful, theyre functional. The user is in control.

Anderman, on analytics: We pay a lot of attention to where people are spending time on the site, and adjust the content to where users are going.

Fichtenbaum: Were figuring out what to do with our unused assetsFor every four pictures in the magazine, there are another 70 in our photo galleries. Along with editors Notebooks, our writers are doing more.  Were giving them a wider berth to express their voice.

Pallot: Weve combined assets from several magazines to yield a category killerOur emphasis is on beautiful, rich, immersive design.

A Step Ahead: What We Can Learn About Wireless from Other Areas

Nihal Mehta, CEO, Ipsh!

Mehta: America, the sleeping giant as compared to Europe and Asia, is finally starting to wake up.  In the U.S., there are now 200 million mobile phone users. By 2009, U.S. mobile handset users will generate 49.8 billion SMS [Short Message Service] messages and 4.4 billion MMS [Multimedia Message Service] messages.  Mobile subscribers will steadily increase to 212 million in 2009, representing 69% of the U.S. population.

Working Without a NetMagazines Go Wireless

Moderator: Steven Levy, Senior Editor, Newsweek

Panelists:

John Dorn, Editor-in-Chief, Backpacker

Olivier Griot, Director of Mobile Services, Hearst Magazines

Lynne D. Johnson, General Manager, Vibe.com and Spin.com

Johnson: We have a two-year mobile initiative built via the magazine, which now has 60,000 users.

Griot: How can old media compete against the more nimble content providers? We have a brand and trust, and a cross-platform reach of our market.

Griot, on Wireless Application Protocol (WAP): We deliver entertainment snacks, little tidbits of information [for our readers], on their way to work and at recess.

Dorn: Our Backpacker reader with his cell phone/MP3 player/camera/GPS device can download maps, pictures and data, and then send back photos and comments to the Backpacker website.

MagazinesThe Hot New Medium

Luncheon Keynote: Wenda Millard, Chief Sales Officer, Yahoo!

Millard, on young people and multitasking: Were reaching these kids with IM, television, catalogs, magazinesBut reach is not enough.  It has to be about connectionWeb and magazines seem to create more engagement and impact when theyre used together.

Rethinking Reader Relationships

Moderator: Laurel Touby, CEO and Cyberhostess, Mediabistro.com

Panelists:

Robert Ames, General Manager, Online, Mens Enthusiast Network, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.

Joel Gurin, EVP, Consumers Union and Publisher, Consumer Reports

Tariq Muhammad, Director of Interactive Media, Black Enterprise

Kathy Rebello, Senior Editor, BusinessWeek Online

Touby: Content is no longer articles produced by editors and presented on a platter to readers.  Content is both the exchange of information between editors and their readers, and between readers and their peers.

Muhammad: Users drive community.  They tell us what to do as much as we tell them what to do.

Rebello: We put control into users hands.  They want to participate in the conversation and contribute to the knowledge baseA vibrant community creates loyalty and that drives trafficBut its also important to maintain the quality of the website so as not to [lose] advertisers.

Ames: Two-thirds of our dot-com visitors are new to the brand.  Seventy-eight percent were shopping for a new car and wanted to know an experts point of view.

Gurin: Our advocacy campaigns [MedicalGuide.org] improve hospital safety.

Redefining Ad Sales

Moderator: Brian Steinberg, Advertising Columnist, The Wall Street Journal

Panelists:

Greg Osberg, EVP, Worldwide Publisher, Newsweek

Chris Poleway, President, The Fortune/Money Group

Andy Markowitz, Director, Digital Marketing, Kraft Foods

Andrew Swinand, EVP, Group Client Leader, Starcom USA.

Swinand, to magazine publishers: Start with the consumer.  Tell me this is what the consumer wants.  This is why and how they interact with my brand.  Tell me how this is an opportunity to be part of that relationship.

Markowitz: I dont care where the eyeballs come from.  I care about the eyeballsI want to break through in a unique way that hooks into their passionI want engagement.

Osberg: Were training sales forces that can sell ideas across platforms.

Poleway, on digital magazines: Its good to be experimenting because valuable learning will come from this.