The brand has seen a 383% growth in audience since 2016 by offering current headlines plus linear-like curated feeds and on-demand access. Two years ago, it launched a cable network.

Belo Media Group is trying to organize its digital assets: Distribion, MarketingFx, and Verticalnerve. Every day, Eric Myers said, he and his team experience "an appropriate sense of panic in the sense of a hustle."

Jennifer Sun, Associate Director, Product, Programmatic Advertising for DotDash, explains her approach to selling the private marketplace proposition on a panel of sales execs at the Publishers Insider Summit.

Because search engines have tweaked their algorithms to bring legitimate news sources to the top, "our competitive set has changed," Bonnie Fuller said, and "Hollywood Life" finds itself competing against the likes of "People," "US Weekly" and TMZ.

Al Jazeera's Andy Sullivan said platforms are telling them to diversify. "They're hedging their bets against a fake news epidemic. We're not looking at views, shares and likes but at view time engagement over pure reach."

"We have to become digital very quickly, and we have to make sure sellers understand it. The nature of our business is local offset by our national digital sales team."

"Data has become real. Our data is creating value for our advertisers, and this is very exciting for us." Indeed, Hearst's goal is to be the world's leading data-driven media company.

Tech stacks are full of acronyms. Take Ryan Heft's. As email marketing manager for KEEN, he said, "ESP is my main world. Our CDP is being developed in a larger capacity."

EAB's Doug Henderson pointed to the new slang word for growing up -- adulting -- by which these kids see mail with their names on them and begin to identify as adults. "They expect to get mail from colleges," he said, "not tweets."

Marion Price, Email Marketing Manager, NA eCommerce at Lenovo, drew up a list of ways to make the best use of automated email, including "Know your people," their purchase data and relationship to your brand.