When it comes to digital entertainment, the only questions people in the industry seem concerned with are who pays for it, and how do we make money from it? On Nov. 18 and 19, the digital media community will congregate in Toronto with hopes of learning the answers.

Monetizing Digital Media is the theme of the upcoming nextMEDIA conference, a two-day event that explores the financing, distribution and profit potential of digital media initiatives.

According to Mark Greenspan, director of digital media for Achilles Media and organizer of the event, it promises to bring together a wide mix of industry personalities, including not only content producers and broadcasters, but most significantly the advertisers who are spending money on digital media.

‘Our goal is to create connections between the advertising and the production,’ says Greenspan. ‘Nothing else exists to bridge these communities together. As next-generation content producers, digital producers not only have to know how to harness the complexities of the new medium, but they also have to run a business out of it as well.’

According to Greenspan, funding for producing digital content is no longer coming from government sources, but more and more from advertising.

‘A large part of the nextMEDIA event will be a crash course on media buying that will help content producers in this space position themselves and grow their business,’ he says.

The first day of the event will have a heavy focus on broadcasters and content producers and the main sources of revenue for them, such as advertising and sponsorship, subscription, on-demand content, e-commerce, and licensing.

The entire second day will be largely focused on the economy of engagement – looking at the ways that advertisers are looking to engage with digital audiences.

The nextMEDIA series of digital events grew out of the old Baddeck New Media Festival, which became part of Achilles Media at the same time it took over the Banff World Television Festival. For four years, nextMEDIA has operated as a complementary event to the Banff fest, but last year a second nextMEDIA event was added in Toronto in November as a way to explore different models of monetizing digital media.

This year, after partnering with the Canadian New Media Awards, Monetizing Digital Media will be even larger than the regular nextMEDIA in Banff, with more than 500 people attending.

Greenspan believes that nextMEDIA’s relevance grows every year due to ‘an increase in the different ways that storytelling and technology are combined.’

For him, the definition of digital media is an evolving thing, expanding beyond simply websites and computer games to also encompass things like video content, mobile applications, and social networking – ‘all technology plays that involve storytelling.’

Participating in the Nov. 18 panel Re-Engineering of the Broadcast Business will be Raja Khanna, co-CEO of GlassBOX Television.

‘Audiences are engaging with digital media more than ever before,’ says Khanna. ‘Broadband video has finally come of age, and despite economic conditions, there are more opportunities for digital media, so this event is coming at the perfect time.’