Sir Martin Sorrell, the founder and chief executive of the world’s largest marketing communications group WPP, will be a keynote speaker at this year’s Future Forum, hosted by The Newspaper Works.

Raju Narisetti, the senior vice president, strategy for News Corp (US), has also been confirmed as a speaker at this year’s forum.

In a recent interview at the Cannes International Advertising Festival with The Australian, Mr Sorrell said that newspapers were more engaging for their readers.

“It maybe that old-style felling trees and distributing newspapers and magazines is more effective than we think. There’s certainly data in the UK, Canada and Australia that demonstrates consumer engagement with newspapers is better than we think. The average person who reads The Times of London newspaper spends 40 minutes … newspapers readers are so much more engaged (and) it maybe that we’re under evaluating,” he said.

The Newspaper Works CEO Mark Hollands said: “We have attracted a world class speaker line-up at the Future Forum this year, which is testament to the influential role news media continues to play in the advertising and communications industry and society in general, and will see the Future Forum once again be the preeminent news media industry conference in the Asia Pacific region.”

Sir Martin will be speaking live via video conference at the Future Forum.