PerforMedia Marketing

IN THE NEWS – Advertising Decline hits the Trade Press

February 25th, 2008

excerpted from Financial Times (FT.com) By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson
Published: February 25, 2008 03:32 - Original Article

SUMMARY: In financial and medical marketing, plans that integrate print, online and event advertising bring the best results. As trade publications feel the squeeze in their advertising revenue, some top publishers are selling their titles. What’s evolving? Publishers are combining the benefits of online and event marketing into ongoing online networking communities.

TREND: Trade magazines were until recently seen as among the most promising of advertising media. Because they enabled brands to reach highly targeted audiences, they were supposed to be more resilient than (pubic-sector) newspapers. Now, however, a structural shift of advertising spending to the internet has combined with fears that advertisers will cut budgets in a threatening economy.

SURVEY: In a poll of advertisers last year, Outsell discovered that the decline in print revenues did not simply reflect the triumph of search engines. Advertisers believed trade magazines were better at generating business leads than search engines, but that trade shows were more effective still, says Chuck Richard, lead analyst at Outsell. Tellingly, “transactional” activities such as trade shows have now overtaken advertising, accounting for 39 per cent of the sector’s revenues.

BOTTOM LINE: “A publisher that is not offering events is missing out on marketing dollars,” the study concluded. “There is still hope for print,” says Mr Richard, “as advertisers find their campaigns work best run across several media at once.”

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