More than 7,000 visitors from 79 countries attended the World Publishing Expo in Hamburg, Germany, the largest global trade fair for the newspaper and news publishing industry, which closed on Wednesday following three days of conferences, workshops, presentations and networking among global industry leaders.
The 45th exhibition, organized annually by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), included more than 200 exhibitors from 22 countries, including printing press manufacturers, editorial and advertising system providers, new media providers and other suppliers to the industry.
The 2015 Expo attendance was slightly higher than last year’s event in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
“I am delighted to have received numerous positive comments from participants and exhibitors who enjoyed the quality of the content and experiences shared during our conferences and open stage sessions. This adds value to the visitors’ experience and brings the Expo into a new dimension,” said Vincent Peyrègne, CEO of WAN-IFRA.
“The World Publishing Expo is the place where exhibitors and publishers talk about the business impact of technologies, and how they can boost their revenue model,” he said. “Publishers move beyond their comfort zone and approach their investments with a strategic mindset rather than with a purely operational one.”
The World Publishing Expo brings together suppliers to the industry with its thought leaders and decision makers. In addition to the exhibition, which showcased the latest technologies, the event featured more than 120 speakers sharing their success stories, two Media Port stages focusing on print and digital publishing, and three premium conferences on newsroom issues, mobile publishing, and the future of printing news products.
Next year’s World Publishing Expo will be held in Vienna, Austria, from 10 to 12 October 2016, at the Messe Wien.
“Overall we had a very good flow of visitors and contacts, and I think it was a good platform to meet our customers for discussions. The World Publishing Expo is the platform for the newspaper industry in Europe,” comments Richard Elmer, Director of Communications, Ferag.
“I think we are seeing a general trend in the market of less investment, consolidation, less printing, in terms of attendance at the event. Our visits were good with our clients, the quality good. One positive development that we are hearing, particularly out of the U.K. and even in the USA, is that circulation and sales seems to be levelling out on print and, more importantly, publishers are starting to realise that print advertising can indeed be effective so they are considering balancing print and digital a bit more, as opposed to purely focussing so much energy on digital,” says Klaus Schmidt, Director of Marketing, KBA.
“It’s a valuable event for our customers for sure. The guys that come are rather positive and have new prospects for business. There is a lot of interest from the direct distribution model,” says Georg Riva, Marketing Manager, Müller Martini.
Norbert Ohl, CEO, ppi Media comments, “It has been a really good show, as our stand has been really full with meetings and presentations. There is a real interest in publishers for a true media-neutral publishing solution and workflow. Even some of our most conservative customers are now thinking this way and working in that direction. On the sales and advertising side, publishers are increasingly looking for ways to ‘mobilise’ their sales staffs out in the field, to equip them with the right tools to best sell their inventory.”
