(MENAFN- Emirates News Agency (WAM)) Digital media is no more about bringing audiences to your website or platform, but about reaching audiences where they are, on platforms that they use.
Meredith Artley, Editor-in-Chief CNN.com was unequivocal about the direction digital media houses need to pursue to be successful in today's - and tomorrow's - digital media landscape.
Artley was speaking at the first break-out session of the second day of the 14th Arab Media Forum (AMF), at the Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai today.
The 20-minute breakout sessions are part of an innovative new experience for AMF participants, situated on The Media Walk, and sponsored by Nakheel. The Media Walk houses media stalls and display centres, apart from regular Davos-style 20-minute media expert sessions.
Artley cites CNN.com's 100 million unique visitors a month as not being the only factor that drives their digital media strategy.
Instead, CNN aims to reach audiences on all devices and on- off-CNN platforms as well, like Facebook and interestingly, by Artley's own admission, Snapchat € a social media site with a pre-teen to teen demograph.
Showing the audience an example of how the CNN digital media machine works, Artley displayed the story of the Germanwings plane crash in the Alps € from the first internal emails, to the final displays on website, mobile platforms, social media and TV.
With broadcast being at the CNN core, Artley also cited how TV is being reinvented for the digital age with CNN Go - "a litter-free TV environment on tablets".
The Alps plane crash was first on Twitter with a CNN-driven hashtag. Next went the mobile alerts.
Teams were working on homepage reports € in London, Hong Kong and Atlanta. Curating all the social media interaction and adding different angles to the story € CNN Money and video content € finally the webpage reports did go up.
The message was clear € CNN.com did not wait for audiences to come to the website to read about the crash story.
They took it to them and then began an interaction with audiences and experts that was spooled across all platforms, eventually on CNN's main TV stations.
Artley believes that the business side of digital is doing well for CNN and even with Facebook increasingly looking to publish news on its platform, the future is where the audience is € out there.
The Arab Media Forum 2015 is being attended by more than 2,000 delegates from the region and the wider world. A third of the speakers this year are foreign experts.
In keeping with the '2015 Year of Innovation' in the UAE, AMF 2015 features two key new concepts € The Media Walk which features a brief history of media; and Davos-style 20-minute sessions sponsored by Nakheel. Additionally, AMF 2015 also features workshops sponsored by DP World.
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