I had never thought about it before, but it seems that B2B publishers may be managing the transition to an online business/distribution model much better than their consumer focused brethren. MediaPost is reporting results of the American Business Media’s 2009 Media Financial Survey, and business publishers are somehow replacing a lot of their offline magazine revenue with substantial online revenues.
While tota B2B publisher revenues were off about 2% from the 2007 to 2008, but this is much better than 16% decline in the traditional B2C newspaper and magazine market. From the report’s press release:
Online media benefited from the continued shift in ad dollars from magazines to online channels. Online display and search advertising, which accounts for more than 50% of total online revenue, gained 12.4% in 2008 versus 2007 and grew at a CAGR of 30.7% from 2006 to 2008. At the same, magazine net ad revenue declined (10.2%) in 2008 versus 2007 and fell at a CAGR of (4.9%) over the three‐year period.
Good for B2B publishers!
I guess the real questions are: 1) what are B2B publishers doing right and 2) can this be applied to B2C publishers.
I hope that this isn’t just because business content users were never trained to expect to get free content like consumers have been…
