Nothing is ever as good, or as bad, as people think. The challenge lies in our ability to fully grasp the true nature of our reality.

In “State of the Local Industry”, media analyst and accomplished industry veteran Ken Doctor will attempt to do just that. He will sort out fact from fiction regarding the current health of the local industry. He will expose the areas local publishers and broadcasters need to be gravely concerned with while also examining the areas where the greatest market opportunities exist.

As the pace of change for local media companies continues to increase, the same is happening for advertising agencies across America. With clients looking to reduce expenses for marketing services coupled with media fragmenting at a rate greater than media spend is growing, agencies are facing challenges and difficulties never witnessed before.

Learn from agency executives as they discuss the opportunities and difficulties they face as they transform their agencies to compete in radically different environments than their agency predecessors. Understand why they spend their digital dollars with portals and networks along with how local media must transform to capture a greater share of the digital dollars they control.

One of the first rules of winning in business is to “know your competition”. The likes of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, Craigslist, Advertising.com and many other newcomers have raised the competitive bar. They continue to increase their pace of technological innovation and advertising acumen to drive better ROI for advertisers. This session will give you intimate knowledge of what your competitors are doing, what they’re selling and how they’re selling against you.

It will help drive understanding of how local media companies need to improve their offerings to advertisers through understanding their users better, choosing the right technology partners and finding industry partners who can move them up the learning curve quickly.

As the overall media landscape has changed, so has the need for the local industry to redefine its value proposition to advertisers. With the calling cards of the portals and networks owning “reach” and “cost-efficiency” in every market, what is your competitive differentiation?

“Local’s Value Proposition” will help uncover the keys to competing in the digital age. This industry has incredible assets; it’s a matter of unlocking them and presenting them properly when the time comes.

Revenue and profit maximization is the goal of each publisher. In the online world, that means becoming experts at Yield Optimization. What is yield optimization? How do sites become experts in this?

What is the value of a rate card? Should I even have a rate card? How does dynamic pricing work? What do I do when my premium content is sold out but over 50% of my non-premium content goes unsold every month?

This session is designed to focus on answering each of these questions and help you walk away with keen insights in how to structure your business properly to optimize your overall site’s revenue.

The Internet, with its many benefits to consumers and advertisers, has brought its own unique set of problems and difficulties. As the Internet expands and grows at an unprecedented rate, so do the choices in media presented to advertisers and their respective agencies.

What are the implications to this new industry as it attempts to scale itself profitability? What does this mean for agencies as they attempt to deal with a more fragmented landscape with exponentially more advertising choices? How must agencies and publishers work together and evolve their business to profitably handle these changes?

In “Scaling the Digital Media Industry”, Sean Finnegan will address these unique challenges from the viewpoint of one of the top agencies in the country. He will address issues the entire agency world struggles to answer as well as bring insight into what OMD is looking for from partners in order to help agencies and publishers alike effectively and profitably scale their business.

“Working with Centro” is designed to help local websites understand what Centro looks for when working with publishers. It will give insight into the inner workings of Centro’s day-to-day lives and how publishers can best help in the process.

This session will also give publishers a preview into Centro’s Local Media Platform along with expectations of Publishers as the system is launched.

This session will leave time for publisher questions at the end.