AudienceS First

News publishers are undergoing a profound digital transformation. The newsroom became the business, and an audience-centric strategy is the essential key to success. But how can a performance-driven change approach be implemented that focuses on audiences? Join our program “AudienceS First. A training program by Table Stakes Europe” and start or accelerate your necessary transformation!

Head coach Doug Smith and coach Stéphane Mayoux will introduce you to audience-centric work in mini-publishing teams combined with the highly successful Table Stakes methodology.

Table Stakes is a poker metaphor. It refers to the amount of money a player must bring to have a seat at the table. We will show you the essential skills required for news media to thrive in the 21st century.

The success of Table Stakes Europe

The methodology has proved to be reliable, inspiring and scalable. 105 teams from 20 countries have participated in WAN-IFRA’s recent Table Stakes Europe programme between 2019 and 2024. They started to address specific audiences and established a performance-driven challenge strategy. The list of successes is outstanding. Some teams increased their digital subscriptions by 30 percent or more. Others extended their digital reach significantly or found the key to completely new audience groups. All teams remarkably improved their ability to swiftly adapt their strategies to the market’s needs. Alumni of the program include titles like Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reach plc, Les Echos, Henneo Group, Ringier Hungary, Russmedia, DuMont Group, FUNKE Medien Group, Irish Times, and many more.

The new programme

WAN-IFRA now offers “AudienceS First. A training programme by Table Stakes Europe” as an individual program for groups up to 10 participants. The programme includes 12 virtual sessions and discussions focusing on excellent use cases from the programme.

Whom should you send? Anyone from your newsroom, ad sales, tech, marketing, project management, and/or top management who wants to understand requirements for success in today’s news media and an audience-centric strategy.