BtoB Media Business - December 2006 - (Page 7)

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The current mantra for American BusiMost of the buzz at the two-day meeting ness Media’s constituents is “in print, in per- revolved around how business publications son and online.” But it was the last two ele- can build a better mousetrap online. ments that drove the agenda at the group’s Take the workshop titled “How Editors annual Top Management Meeting last Are Embracing the Digital Age.” Wyatt Kash, month in Chicago. editorial director of Government Computer The conference attracted 310 people, a News and PostNewsweek Tech Media, said new record, up from 280 attendees last year. b-to-b editors need to take ownership of their Many of the work sessions featured hands- readers’ “total online experience” if their meon advice on how business dia properties are to stay viable A B M TOP publishers can boost their digiin an increasingly digital age. tal presence and enhance their MANAGEMENT “We’re used to words and MEETING trade shows. B-to-b trade shows layout, but I realize that my auRECAP have surged following a few dience gets a lot of copies [of down years after the Sept. 11 attacks. GCN] in a PDF and, if I’m not where they The focus on the Web and trade shows are, I’m going to lose them,” said Kash, who was apt considering trends in b-to-b media created a mobile edition of GCN for fear of spending. losing the 15% of his subscribers who reGordon Hughes II, president-CEO of ceive e-mail newsletters on their cell phones. ABM, said in his opening remarks that print Kash added that GCN has taken advanad pages would grow 1% to 2% this year, tage of electronic publishing by finding print revenue would increase 2% to 4% granular aspects of stories that with proper and event revenue would grow 6% to 8%. research can be turned into new products In 2007, he added, face-to-face revenue will and offering audio versions of every story be “at parity” with print. Magazines now posted on its Web site. generate about $10.8 billion a year in revThere are also relatively inexpensive enue and events about $10.4 billion. ways for business publishers to capitalize on Digital revenue, Hughes said, will con- online video. “I don’t see our journalists gotinue its double-digit growth, increasing ing out with hand-held cameras just yet, but 22% to 25%. For ABM members, the aver- you can take advantage of events that have age revenue contribution currently coming video feeds,” Kash said. from e-media is roughly 14%. James Mathews, editorial director of The custom media business, an increas- Aviation Week, said editors must work to ingly attractive option for business publish- find ways to integrate data and analytics BY MATTHEW SCHWARTZ ABM President-CEO Gordon Hughes II sees continued double-digit growth online. into their editorial thinking. For example, Aviation Week recently launched the MRO maintenance, repair and operations Prospector, a Web-based suite that includes benchmarking and business development trends. “All you’re doing by embracing digital is expanding the scope of journalists who can become powerful journalists by bringing information to people who need it, [in] whatever form they need it,” Mathews said. In a session on face-to-face events, Don Pazour, CEO of Access Intelligence, said the events process has gotten considerably more demanding in recent years. “Marketers who want to be able to measure their return on investment are looking for more and better ways to interact with the audience,” he said. Margaret Pederson, president of Prism Business Media’s exhibitions division, added: “Because events are face-to-face, everything is out in the open. If it’s a success, it’s brilliant; but if it fails, there’s no way to hide it.” —Marie Griffin contributed to this report ABM membership increases to over 300 he number of American Business Media members stands at 326, up from 288 a year ago. New members added in the past year include online pure plays such as iCopyright and TradeComet.com, as well as Lincoln Healthcare Events. Cygnus Business Media, which left ABM in 2002, has rejoined the organization. “I need to reposition Cygnus with advertisers, and I’ll learn a lot from ABM on how to do that,” said Carr Davis, who took the helm of Cygnus along with co-CEO Anthony O’Brien earlier this year to ramp up the media company’s online efforts. T Advantage Business Media, which was created this year by former Cygnus Publishing president Richard Reiff, has also joined ABM’s ranks. Yahoo! and Outsell Inc., which both joined ABM as associate members, this year were reclassified as media members, which entails full voting privileges. ABM also welcomed three companies from India: Infomedia India, ITNation India and Scope e-Knowledge Center. Perhaps in a reflection of the increased membership, this year’s Top Management Meeting drew a record 310 people, com—Matthew Schwartz pared with 280 attendees last year. mediabusinessonline.com | December 2006 | Media Business | 7 Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct /var/lib/php/session in Unknown on line 0 http://mediabusinessonline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BtoB Media Business - December 2006

Table of Contents
Upfront
Special Report
Resource Guide
Endnote
Sales & Marketing
M&A
Events
Online
Circulation
Production
People
Benchmarks

BtoB Media Business - December 2006