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‘The format is secondary’: How Reuters Events will drive global and local engagement on- and off-line — digiday.com

Reuters started prepping for a schedule of 70 in-person industry conferences in 2020, but six months later, live events were halted. This is a really interesting look at how the publisher has adapted since then to a packed roster of virtual events, which has seen attendees from 93% of the world's countries and a 1,400% increase in attendance.

Of particular note are their plans for 2021. We often hear people talk about 'hybrid events' being the future, but what will these actually look like?

“You’re not going to fly to eight cities a year to get that knowledge, but now people will attend the in-person events near them and will get the rest of the information with the virtual conference offerings," said CMO Josh London.

This 'hub and spoke' model could be a 5,000-person event broken up over 500 venues that are hyper regional for global audiences. Attendees can catch up on global content in their own time, whilst getting the benefits of the networking at a more local level. Meanwhile, events professionals are almost certainly sweating at the thought!

How news publishers should use Black Friday to drive paid subscriptions — www.pressgazette.co.uk

There are lessons here for publishers of all shapes and sizes. People are in a purchase mindset, and are very open to promotions on Black Friday. "If someone has demonstrated an interest in crossing the paywall, this is the time to give them a push."

Quartz sees record week for memberships after sales announcement — www.mediapost.com

We were saying just this week in the news round up that we hoped Quartz's newfound independence would bring it good things. But we didn't anticipate it happening quite this quickly! The site saw a surge in new members after last week's announcement, bringing its total to over 25,000 paying members.

Instagram cautiously considers paying publishers — www.axios.com

The 'cautiously' is apparently because Insta is still figuring out how to share revenue with all creators, and publishers are just a small piece of that. The platform is mulling a plan to create a revenue share program for IGTV ads, but talks with publishers have been deferred for now, according to Axios.

This week's podcast:

Project 23 co-founder Gary Rayneau on building diverse and inclusive media — voices.media

This week Gary Rayneau, co-founder of Project 23 tells us about about his time leading a diverse team at Dennis, the impact of Black Lives Matter in 2020, and how publishers can approach diversity and inclusion in the right way.

Conversations: Discussing the value of the open internet to advertisers in a cookie-less world — voices.media

This special Conversations episode of Media Voices, sponsored by Lotame, discusses the importance of an open web to advertisers, the realities of our new cookie-less world and how identity solutions add value to the entire ecosystem.