There is so much information on the Internet that it can be difficult for consumers to find exactly what they are looking for -- a pitfall that now applies to the mobile Web.

The challenge for publishers is to deliver relevant, actionable content that resonates with consumers. The ad:tech New York panel "Publishing in the Digital Age -- Context Is King" addressed that challenge.

"The Internet contains huge quantities of information and as of March 2008, there were more than 100 million Web sites," said Pam Horan, president of the Online Publishers Association. "Google's Schmidt says the Internet is a cesspool and it can be hard to stand out.

"The solution is providing quality content and increasing your relevance by being trustworthy and proving your credibility by ascribing different value to different types of content," she said.

She said the three most important things to keep in mind is delivering content that has relevance, resonance and actionability.

"People are looking for authority, sources matter and consumers value the role of the editor," Ms. Horan said. "Seventy-six percent of Internet users agreed with the statement 'I would appreciate the assitance of editor to vet and assess Internet content.'

"Editors can help edit the Web and not just the content," she said. "They can screen out the garbage and pleasantly surprise the consumer to form a bond of trust."

An online presence, as with a mobile presence, has an impact on the purchase process, from the initial awareness and product selection to making a buying decision. However, not all sites are created equal.

"Ads on content sites have greater impact throughout the purchase funnel -- ads placed on content sites raise brand favorability and purchase intent significantly more than ads that run on portals," Ms. Horan said.

"In fact, ads on content sites provide double the brand favorability and purchase intent than advertising placed with ad networks."

Sponsorships on branded content sites are 36 percent more effective than on portals and ads on content sites have significant impact on younger and affluent audiences -- 18-34-year-olds are especially responsive, Ms. Horan said.

"For high-quality brands, it's more about brand association than click-throughs," she said.

The New York Times newspaper brand is launching a counterintuitive new platform on its Web site to engender reader loyalty, Times Extra.

"Times Extra is an aggregation play that started off as an automated list of articles around a given subject, but now includes related headlines from our competitors around the Web," said Vivian Schiller, senior vice president/general manager of NYTimes.com.

"The message is 'Come to us, we want you to consume our content, but we're going to send you wherever you need to be and we're sure you're going to come back,' which we think will work to the overall benefit of traffic growth," she said.

Another new feature is Times People.

"Times People is not a social network, but it's a way for us to engage with our active community so they can recommend articles to peers, subscribe to a RSS/syndication feed and download widgets," Ms. Schiller said.

"The role of the editor is changing to someone who curates content, to someone who curates the entire Web," she said.

"As for advertising, contextual targeting is still absolutely far and away continues to be the big winner."

BusinessWeek magazine has launched a BusinessExchange portal to its Website that integrates reader comments.

"A McKinsey study found that people who consume news typically rely on 16 to 18 brands, and as traditional media, we like to think people come to us and no one else, but it's not true," said John A. Byrne, executive editor of BusinessWeek magazine and editor in chief of BusinessWeek.com, New York.

"There's too much info chasing too few eyeballs with too little time to absorb it all, and because the needs of professionals are fairly narrow, it's hard to deliver information thats relevant and actionable enough," he said.

"The Internet is moving toward microcommunities, which lets us get into a community where we can share our passions and interests. With BusinessExchange, readers can create topics and gather related information no matter where it appears.

"Our readers decide what content we cover and what content rises to the top. It's in the hands of the community."

An important piece of the puzzle is for BusinessWeek to get acknowledged experts in the field to chime in on each topic.

The organization of the site gives advertisers the ability to hyper-target a specific audience organically, as opposed to behavioral targeting.

Mr. Byrne said that with the layoffs at Time Warner and the decision of The Christian Science Monitor newspaper next year to go online and to go from daily to weekly, there's an acute awareness by reporters of the need to do things differently and providing content that matters to the audience.

"What the Web has done for editors, it has allow them to imagine a revolution in journalism," Mr. Byrne said.

"We thought of it as a product that we handed down, but this allows us to turn journalism into a process, 'What stories do you want us to write, we're going to interview someone tomorrow, what questions we should ask?'" he said.

"Journalists have been afraid to expose what they've been working on, but using the story as the starting point for an extended and engaged conversation with readership is far more important than the story itself.

"BusinessExchange is like a campfire: there are people gathered around it, we make an effort to engage the audience, and it's more accessible because we respect the people who read us and their opinions.

"Big brands need to have engagement with their audiences to induce trust and loyalty."