Yes, there's hope: Hard-copy newspapers not only pull the dollars, but also the serious attention of young people, with their ability to spend a bigger factor than their age.

Philstar Media's Lucien Dy Tioca reported readership growth in the 20-29-year-old audience group, adding that some youngsters are voracious newspaper readers. The company had partnered a cable-TV channel to produce a romcom with a financial literacy message pitched at the Filippino milennials who account for a third of the population, which led audience to content in the parent newspaper... and the newspaper itself to a $1 million revenue boost from the first series alone.

For some of this age-group, print is "the new media", drawing sought-after ABC1 and D-class females: "Our readers have a propensity to spend," Dy Tioca says.

Mark Hollands from Australian not-for-profit group The Newspaper Works was one of several at the second day of Publish Asia to challenge assumptions: "Don't assume your future is digital, even through someone else's might be," he warned.

A bigger challenge seems to be to get agencies to recognize statistics which show that agency spend on print and digital is out of step with audience and engagement.

The group - owned by the country's four largest publishers, 79 per cent of whose revenue comes from print - developed new audience metrics (Emma), promotes newspapers' influence, and benchmarks advertisements.

Determined to transform from a print publisher to a multimedia powerhouse, Singapore Press Holdings still gets the greater part of its revenue from its newspapers. Albeit in the most innovative ways: SVP and strategic marketing head Geoff Tan talked very-small client clusters and trade engagement, celebrating the power of print with a touring exhibition called 'For the love of newspaper advertisements'.

And origami: A novel broadsheet ad with instructions to fold it into a goat won over habitual digital advertiser Tiger Beer and helped draw $200,000 worth of advertising. "There's plenty of life left in print," he says.

Not that there wasn't a lot of talk about chat apps and video as well, and even Pressreader's Nikolay Malyarov was showing Buzzfeed clips. The real inside story however, came from Simon Crerar, editor of Buzzfeed Australia (see our report here)

Asha Phillips helped make analytics and Crowdtangle sexy, and former colleague Alan Soon brought insights to bots including Slack, the NYT's Blossombot, and the amazing Crystal, which engages users and even helps draft emails to them. "It's not a leap of faith to imagine what the future might be like," he says.

And, "if you don't want to hand your money over the Facebook, get out of advertising."

Neither Dow Jones' (News Corp's) Barrons' Asia venture - introduced by publisher Tracy Young and still spending more than it makes on marketing - nor Malaysia's Star Media Group were doing that, although Star has invested in TV, events, training and rights to Marvel and Transformer exhibitions in Paris and Las Vegas. At 80 per cent of revenue however, print "still pays the bills and," group managing director Wong Chun Wai says, "long may it continue."

Peter Coleman

Pictured: The Newspaper Works chief executive Mark Hollands

On our homepage: Star Media Group managing director Wong Chun Wai