THE popularity of smartphones and mobile devices, as well as the rising impact of social media, has shifted how ordinary readers have access to news stories.

Consumers' attention is drawn towards all kinds of colorful applications on touch phones and tablets. How will traditional media ride on the waves of technological reform? Is the booming of social media a blessing or rather a misfortune for newspaper and magazine publishers? Top media and advertising executives joined a recent Circle A salon to talk about what they've done to cope with the shift of reading habits, how they're building new channels to reach more readers and how they're riding on the new trend to make their stories more influential. Circle A was initiated by AdChina in 2010, aimed at bringing together media, advertising and new media companies in an open platform to exchange views. Shanghai Daily is the co-host of the inaugural Circle A in Shanghai this month.

Philip Kuai:

We all know that Sina launched a successful promotion for its Weibo service several years ago. But it's a company with huge capital and human resources. How do you promote your mobile applications with limited budgets and resources?

Jane Yu: We didn't do any big-scale market promotions during the initial stage of iWeekly.

First we invited some "opinion leaders" to use the application and got some recommendations from them. Then we were featured by Apple in its App Store, which was a key step for us.

Apple will feature some valuable applications in every catalog and you should seize the opportunity to be recommended in the feature list.

Benjamin Wei: There are some methods like posting in forums or application recommendation websites. But the key thing is the app's quality. If it's really fascinating, it will get recommendations and be featured naturally.

Philip Kuai:

The boom in mobile Internet and the smartphones and tablets has offered many new channels to distribute one's content. Readers are getting so many choices, and to catch readers' attention there has to be a very good convergence of high quality content and user experience.

I would like to hear how each of you are thinking about expanding new platforms and how to better combine new media platforms with existing content. How do you balance inputs on your own new media platform and social media platforms?

Daphne Wu: Social media platforms such as Sina Weibo has helped us to get our news stories delivered to a very large audience and wider than we have expected.

They have opened up many new channels to get our voices heard and our ideas communicated, but what matters for us content producers most is the agenda-setting process, the ability to produce high quality news stories with social impact.

A content producer is like a curator, and mobile applications provide a better way to present our stories and ideas. The most essential thing is to have our own platform in the mobile Internet sector and to keep our readers because readers are our core value.

We have to make sure our intellectual property rights don't get infringed and at the same time get our stories presented through various new channels.

Jack Gao: In the Internet era, good news quality itself is the best advertising for publishers. However, digitalized media content and the digital way of selling will become the mainstream in the long run.

We have to keep in mind that running media in the digital age requires us to adapt to new consumer habits. Merely moving the newspaper stories to an iPad version won't do much benefit because the digital editing process and publication procedures have changed completely.

There have been arguments whether those with high quality content or those with an excellent interactive experience on mobile devices could dominate the market. From the current experience, only by combining those two can one become a successful media company.

Philip Kuai: Investing in the Internet sector is an irreversible trend because if you're not doing it, someone else will grow and take away your market share. Media executives had to seek a lot of partners in the third- and fourth-tier cities to reach a wider audience, but the Internet era has brought along a whole new pattern of distribution and circulation, a condition that wasn't considered before.

As for content providers, it's extremely important to have their own platforms because that's where subscribers and potential advertising income are coming from.

Phillip Kuai:

In terms of advertising sales, I think it is easier to understand the clients' needs if you merge the sales team with the print media, but it will be rather difficult for the new media sector to become an independent team. What's your strategy in terms of managing your sales team?

Peter Zhang: The Internet, especially mobile devices, have pushed classifieds to move towards the mobile end because it's quicker, cheaper and easier to reach readers. We're persuading and helping advertisers to move their classifieds to new media channels and setting up a new platform. Though new media will eat into the market shares of newspaper and TV, traditional media won't disappear in the future as many industry observers expected.

Maybe total newspaper circulation will drop by two-thirds in 2015 but the average price (of newspapers) will jump fourfold then. Reading newspapers will become a habit among elite groups.

Daphne Wu:

When we first launched the Caixin Century Magazine, we were merging the new media department together with the print media sales team. One year later, we split our sales and management team and mobile Internet is still an integral part of our Internet business, because it's still not mature enough to become an independent business unit.

When we're selling advertisements, sometimes online and offline resources are merged together although the new media sector has an independent sales and management team.

Tracy Zhang:

We don't have a print version in Chinese mainland so when we first introduced the online version as well as iPad and iPhone versions, we still didn't know how the market would react to these products. At that time we were selling advertising slots on a monthly basis regardless of how much the traffic was. Once our number of viewers is going at a more steady base, our advertising rates will be based on cost per thousand views.

Jeff Chang:

Digital distribution channels have set up a threshold for our audience and in some way it has helped us to identify which type of consumer one is, whether he's using an iPhone or Android phone or an iPad owner.

We also teamed up with HTC to pre-install our content and applications in a new mobile phone to allow our readers to have better access to our content. The traditional way to manage Internet resources will no longer work in the mobile Internet sector.

When we combine the print media content with a new presentation way on mobile Internet, it could have a much larger value than a magazine.

Benjamin Wei:

Advertisers have increased spending over the past few years on mobile media and all kinds of applications.

The digital age has enabled advertisers and agencies to identify and target their customers more conveniently. Advertising campaigns are less likely to go unnoticed because now it's easier to find the end user by finding out about their media habits and reading practices on subjects. Surely the old ways of measuring investment return no longer works for mobile Internet campaigns.

Philip Kuai:

Welcome, everyone. I am very glad to see you in this forum called "The Traditional Media's Spring: New Media." All the panel speakers are senior-level executives with rich experience in the media and advertising industries. We would like you to share your opinions on new media development.

Let's start with the following questions: How do you develop your new media division? What's your vision for the new media sector?

Peter Zhang: Shanghai Daily started with new media expansion as early as 2006 to 2007. Now we continue investing in digital media and aim to gain more income from it.

We do everything possible to follow the digital wave and develop our new media division, just like what people do for girl friends. Since the early days, Shanghai Daily has kicked off various newspaper versions for portable devices from iRex, Kindle, Blackberry, iPhone to iPad. For example, our newspaper was the first in Asia to land on Amazon's Kindle in 2008.

Tracy Zhang: As a subsidiary of the UK newspaper, FTChinese.com's new media investment is cautious. Currently we don't have a local newspaper version in China but we still have 1.7 million Chinese language subscribers. We started mobile applications development in 2009 and kicked off with iPad, Android and iPhone applications in 2010. All those applications are free now, depending on advertising income.

We expect to get some direct income through our content in the mobile applications one day. Therefore, we try to develop some finance-related applications and hope to cash in through them in the future.

Jane Yu: Our mobile applications came from one of my birthday gifts. At the beginning of 2010, I got an iPhone for my birthday. It's so fascinating that it inspired me to develop a mobile application for Modern Weekly. We call it iWeekly as we want to become an independent media on the iOS platform.

Up to now, the download of iWeekly on iPhone and iPad has surpassed 4.5 million, and 60 to 66 percent of them are active users. In addition, iWeekly has developed over 60 long-term advertising partners including many luxury brands.

Yang Yudong: Compared with early birds like Shanghai Daily, CBN is still a "follower" in the new media sector. But we have our characteristics as we are a 360-degree media group with newspaper, radio, TV and website platforms.

We try to make better use of it and integrate content through different platforms.

Jack Gao: Media is changing constantly. Every morning, there are quite a few new applications to surprise us, therefore you have to learn and adapt to catch the wave.