A year ago, publishing on the iPad wasn't on anyone's agenda. Now it seems as if it's all anyone wants to talk about.

Here's what Holm Münstermann, Head of Strategy & Advertising at Axel Springer, Europe's largest newspaper publisher, has to say: "We see the iPad app as the new print."

The reason for this optimism is that the iPad can combine the best of both print and digital - unlike an online portal, it has a beginning and end, and it can be read offline. But it also allows for digital storytelling, navigation, other attributes of the digital world.

Most importantly, the content is paid.

"In print newspapers, we get half our revenue from advertising but the other part we get from our readers, through paid content," says Münstermann, speaking at the ongoing WAN-IFRA Middle East Publishing Conference. "And this is what we lack on digital and it is what's missing in the first wave of digitisation. When we think of a marketing strategy for the iPad, we not only look at the advertising sales, but we have to look at the second chance to establish paid content in the digital world."

More on Münstermann's presentation can be found here.

Summaries of all conference presentations can be found here.