BtoB Media Business - December 2007 - (Page 12)

VERTICAL OUTLOOK TECHNOLOGY 2007 YTD pages: 23,384.3 2006 YTD pages: 26,524.3 % change: -11.84 Bright Spots: Technology companies are increasingly looking to business publishers to help them craft Webbased marketing programs that will appeal to IT buyers who spend most of their time online. Challenges: Efforts by b-to-b media companies to build more communitybased Web sites are limited by their own budget constraints and those of their customers. TELECOMMUNICATIONS 2007 YTD pages: 5,633.7 2006 YTD pages: 6,102.8 % change: -7.69% Bright spots: Telecom companies are embracing new technologies and need to buy new tools to keep up. There is also a growing interest in advertising among telecom companies that are a notch or two below the major players. Challenges: Consolidation continues to take a toll, with fewer telecom buyers to spread their budgets around. TRAVEL-MEETINGS 2007 YTD pages: 18,976.1 2006 YTD pages: 19,249.0 % change: -1.42% Bright spots: Hotels, meeting facilities, car rental companies and cruise lines are doing well and spending more on online trade advertising. Challenges: Travel spending is closely tied to the economy and will react quickly to a slump. irtualization,” a word used to describe companies’ heavy investment in information technology to help manage their business processes more efficiently, is becoming a key term in tech publishers’ vocabulary. “All companies are trying to deploy some version of virtualization,” said Sloan Seymour, president-CEO of Ziff Davis Enterprise, whose products include Baseline, CIO Insight and eWeek. “By managing business more efficiently, it allows companies to spend more money on business applications that can drive revenue.” The challenge for business publishers is to create online, community-based marketing tools that will help their IT customers capitalize on corporate America’s embrace of virtualization. “We can write the content that is going to meet the information needs of their customers,” Seymour said. Tony Uphoff, president of CMP’s Business Technology Group, whose portfolio includes Information Week and IT conference and expo Interop, calls virtualization a “hot topic” for IT publishers. “It’s classic IT—deploy the kinds of applications that will have an impact on their customers,” Uphoff said. “It’s no longer, ‘Gee whiz; we have a new toy we can play with.’ Marketers are much savvier about harnessing Web applications.” In addition to virtualization tools, IT buyers are focused on computer security, storage and upgrading their laptops to get a leg up on mobile marketing. Uphoff predicts double-digit growth for his group’s online and event properties and a slight dip in print revenue. Seymour said demand for Ziff Davis’ online Enterprise Buyers’ Guides is expected to increase 25% in 2008 compared with this year. —M.S. ‘V T elecom companies continue to adopt new technologies, from WiMAX to IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), and need to buy new products and services to bring them up to speed, industry observers say. “There’s a lot of demand in telecom markets, and I’m still very bullish,” said Jeff Giesea, president of FierceMarkets, which, among other media venues, offers eight digital publications covering telecom. These properties include FierceTelecom and FierceWireless, as well as the recently launched FierceMobileContent and FierceWireless:Europe. “The challenge is to keep up with the trends and look into new areas of investments among the telecoms.” Giesea said he is seeing growing demand among telecom companies to adopt WiMAX, a telecommunications technology to send wireless data over long distances. He refers to the technology as “Wi-Fi on steroids.” He pointed to online video and international audiences as two other emerging areas of growing appeal to telecom companies. “For every bit of consolidation, there are new pools of activity in telecom,” he said. Still, consolidation in telecom markets—Alcatel-Lucent and Siemens Nokia, for example—is taking a toll. “Rarely when you see two companies come together does one plus one equal two” when it comes to media buying, said Mark Hickey, publisher of Telephony. “It usually equals one and a half.” Hickey said he is also seeing more interest in advertising among smaller telecom companies, such as Cincinnati Bell and TDS Inc. “It’s a new environment for both big and small vendors, and we’re seeing increasing opportunities and more marketing efforts for the carriers,” he said. —M.S. T he travel-meetings publishing market is as flat as flat can be in terms of print ad pages. However, the major business sectors within travel are doing well, with spending up in several key areas. The business meeting and convention business “is in its third or fourth year of steady growth,” said Bernie Schraer, group publisher of Northstar Travel Media’s Meetings & Conventions. Hotels and convention facilities are so booked up that “we just hosted a conference to teach meeting planners how to negotiate in a seller’s market.” For 2008, Schraer predicts additional print advertising growth as well as continued growth in online spending. Kerry Cannon, group publisher for the Travel Agent media group at Questex, said IMS showed the leisure travel sector of b-to-b media to be down 3% in ad pages through September. “I believe the market would be up if online were included,” he said. “I just can’t quantify how much.” Cannon noted that in the case of Travel Agent University, the company’s custom education program, advertising has migrated from print to online. While print ad page counts have been negatively affected, “we’ve definitely been able to retain the revenue,” he said. “In fact, the business is trending slightly upward.” At Northstar’s Travel Weekly, ad pages were up 7% through September, while print revenue grew 10%, said Bob Sullivan, VP-publisher, “For the year, our electronic business will be up 25%,” he said. “So we’re looking at a total revenue increase of more than 12% overall.” Sullivan added: “Suppliers have discovered that agents bring higher-ticket, higher-margin business. So we’ve had advertisers coming back after several years. Plus, hotels, rental cars, cruise lines and destinations are doing well.” For 2008, “all indications are for a continued robust market,” Sullivan said. —M. G. mediabusinessonline.com | December 2007 | Media Business | 12 http://mediabusinessonline.com

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BtoB Media Business - December 2007 Contents Upfront Vertical Outlook Resource Guide Sales & Marketing M&A Events Production Online Circulation People Benchmarks Endnote

BtoB Media Business - December 2007

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