Panel - What is next: Digital Strategies in Media Industry in the Region. Where is the money?

Participants - Vladimir Petkov (economedia, BG), Calin Fusu (Neogen, RO), Elif Bakiler (Hurriyet, TR), Dragos Stanca (F5, Realitatea – Catavencu, RO), Ivaylo Lakov (investor, BG).

Future of their business models

Calin Fusu: Neogen has 2 main sources of revenues – 60% Advertising (direct marketing, special projects); 40% Users (games, voting system)

Dragos Stanca: 40% of the revenue comes from users that pay for content (selling specific content to users); About mobi sites: it’s a nice to have thing right now; for sure we have to be there; what works: sms alerts to link to websites.

Challenges in the near future (6 months)

Elif Bakiler: exploring new ways of visualizing content; understanding how the users like to spend their time online.

Romania: focusing on the business models that are working and convincing the advertisers that the internet is a good and safe place

• Calin Fusu: Neogen needs to grow its audience’s age (how to do that), and bestjobs.bg has to work on the recruitment market in Bulgaria.
• Dragos Stanca: it is very important to have measurements and not to be a black box for Advertisers

Our favorite quote, which turned out to be very catchy to the public, was Content is King, Distribution is King Kong. (shouted out loud by Calin Fusu)