Too crucial to fail: 2
Jinfo Blog

25th May 2009

By Tim Buckley Owen

Item

If the mainstream media are feeling the pressure from the combined effect of the advertising downturn and readers’ expectation of free information (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e19910), that’s nothing compared to the turmoil the business-to-business sector is going through. There are things happening there that information managers just can’t afford to ignore. Strong reliance on subscription revenue, mostly from electronic services, and comparatively little dependence on advertising income, may have enabled Lloyd’s List publisher Informa to report strong results for 2008 (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e16896). But that hasn’t prevented it from having to put its computer management division Robbins-Gioia up for sale, launch a rights issue and establish a new parent company in a more tax-friendly Jersey/Swiss environment – all to help it offset debts incurred partly as a result of its acquisition of market research publisher Datamonitor in the more expansionist times of 2007. (All widely reported at: http://digbig.com/4ysya http://digbig.com/4ysyb http://digbig.com/4ysyc http://digbig.com/4ysyh http://digbig.com/4ysyj http://digbig.com/4ysyk http://digbig.com/4ysym). Meanwhile trade magazine publisher United Business Media has announced that it will seize the opportunity offered by the credit crunch to go on the acquisition trail, looking for high quality bargains (see also http://www.vivavip.com/go/e15240 and http://www.vivavip.com/go/e18217 incidentally). But that hasn’t prevented it from acknowledging that its print magazines are now contributing less than 10% of profits and are heavily dependent on advertising revenue – so it will be converting titles from free to paid-for wherever possible and increasing subscriber numbers (http://digbig.com/4ysyd). Tim Weller, chief executive of Incisive Media (which recently ceased direct publication of Information World Review and licensed it instead to Bizmedia), has also made clear that he doesn’t believe the current controlled circulation model is sustainable. He expects his company to be charging for all its content in due course (http://digbig.com/4ysye). And this is despite early results from an advertising and marketing survey by information industry consultant Outsell. These show that, although the recession is shrinking budgets, small B2B advertisers in both the United Kingdom and United States remain ‘big spenders’ (http://digbig.com/4ysyf). So the days of predominantly print publishers regarding their websites as profile raising loss leaders seem to be dying fast. In fact, American Business Media’s new Media Financial Survey delivers the coup de grace; reflecting today’s integrated B2B media model of print, online, data and events, it too shows that it’s online revenue that’s currently displaying the strongest growth (http://digbig.com/4ysyg). It’s surely pointless to try to resist the trend – but we do need to keep a weather eye on the quality, reliability, timeliness and, above all, variety of the specialist reporting on which we in the information profession depend. If we are to end up with the trade and business media we need to do our job properly, we must be ready to make our voices heard.

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