UBM Tech kills print, makes killing in events
Yesterday, UBM Tech officially announced the death of all print publications with a couple of small exceptions, in favor of a new global strategy that merges content with events. This is a sea change for the electronics design industry and brings up a lot of questions.
First, some details. There will still be publications like EE Times, EBN, EDN and Information Week, but they will all be online. These publications, however, are no longer publications but “communities” where information is shared and discussed under the eye of content managers...which used to be called journalists. These managers will still be developing original content on the sites, but that content is meant to drive readers to additional content placed by sponsors...which used to be called advertisers.
Here’s where it gets interesting. All this content is focused on one direction: the events that UBM puts on including Design West, ARM Tech Con, DesignCon, the Black Hat Conference and hundreds of others. Why are they doing this? Because advertising in print has dropped to 8 percent of their total revenue per annum and revenue from events is growing by leaps and bounds. Currently, UBM is number 4 in the trade show industry behind Reed Exhibitions, Messe Frankfurt, and GL Events. Interestingly enough, Reed sold all of its print and online publications a few years ago, several of them to UBM. But UBM is integrating those publications into their events business now which creates a massive promotional engine for their events.
Several years ago, UBM Tech CEO Paul Miller told me that UBM will soon not be a media company but a marketing company and it seems the transition is complete. Apparently, UBM even killed EE Times Confidential, the subscription-only publication that Miller had crowed about to me as recently as January 2012 as an example of how a magazine can be run profitably. The last issue I can find is March 2012 and the last article on line is a wrap up of ARM Tech Con from October.
(That’s a little embarrassing for me because I’ve been using EET Confidential as an example of how people will pay for good content.)
This move has significant implications for everyone. If you are a startup company hoping to get a few lines of decent press from a UBM “content manager” then you will need to be spending some money on at least one of their trade shows; or you will have to start looking at one of the media companies that still serves your niche. And many of the latter are developing their own niche communities where the sponsors hold sway over the content...and in many cases create themselves.
If you are a media company, a door of opportunity has just swung wide open for you to fill the gap with independent content, or at least a repository for sponsored content that doesn’t come with a big trade show price tag.
Any company that wants to get their story out into the world is going to have to learn how to create compelling engaging content or be overwhelmed by competitors who do.
Is this a good move for UBM? I think it is. The media world would have loved to continue being sources of unbiased content, but no one wanted to pay for it under that paradigm. Now, to be successful, companies are going to have to be concerned with developing that content themselves, and companies like UBM are going to profit from that. So is everyone involved in real journalism.
It’s a sellers market for journalists now. Evolve or follow the Dodo.
Want to start developing effective content for the new paradigm? Call us.
One of the things often overlooked on these schemes is the audience. There is still a large audience of engineering professionals who would like to read unbiased, unpaid, high-quality editorial and analysis written by experts. That's been our philosophy at EE Journal for the past ten years, and it will continue. We have maintained steady audience and revenue growth and see no reason to abandon that for this type of pay-for-play model. Engineers are smart enough to know the difference between paid, biased content and real objective analysis.
ReplyDeleteI think I also repeat the UBM Tech is not calling itself a media company. It's a marketing company. The content it creates is no longer as important as how that content is distributed. The companies that participate in their structure are responsible for the content and, as you point out, the consumers of that content will want it vetted objectively... so they either you third party journalists or they hire people who will be objective. We expect out doctors to tell us the truth. After all, that's what we pay them for.
ReplyDeleteLou-
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that every editor is a filter, and every publication is a product of that filter, I'd prefer to think that the filtering process is based on the editor's judgment and not the size of an advertiser's check.
I don't mind an editor spinning the news, omitting news, or highlighting other news, as long as his motives are clear and above-board and personal. If I don't like his editorial judgment, I go elsewhere. But to let the "community" decide (read: sponsor dollars) is just... abdicating one's responsibility.
I don't believe that PR budgets correlate with newsworthiness. That would make every Microsoft sneeze headline news, while 500 startups become irrelevant. That ain't right.
I completely agree with you under the model that was what came out of the 20th century. But things have changed. Then, where the "community" could respond with letters to the editor and contributed articles, the journalist held sway on the conversation. That paradigm, now, is only part of the conversation and one that is increasingly difficult, if not impossible to fund effectively. Now every customer and every vendor can publish content and actually wants to.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't quite agree that what UBM is doing is letting the sponsor dollars dictate how something is covered. ARM has hundreds of partners, all of which have a story to tell. But the limited resources of todays media (90 percent of the editorial staff headcount in the electronics press is gone since 2000), ARM has a fiscal need to make sure those stories are told because every time a little partner makes money, ARM makes a money. Same goes for Intel, nVidia, Google and Facebook. Does that mean what you do as an analyst or what Kevin does as a journalist worth less? Of course not. It's still valuable and important, but it isn't the only way information gets published and discussed anymore.
What we have to answer, and we are going to when we get together, is where everything fits in the current paradigm. Right now, UBM says they are effectively out of the media business as the soul focus of what they do. They are going to cover, as objectively as any journalist, what occurs within the considerable scope of their event environment. Now the participants don't pay of banner ads, or to post webinars and whitepapers, they get them as part of their participation. The bad news is that their plans may take dollars out of budgets they might have spent on you. The good news is that those who don't want to participate will need you more.
There is a lot of misconception here folks. We are employing a really unique model at UBM that combines editorial that is quality, independent, credible third party content produced by editors of the likes of Brian Fuller, Alex Wolfe, Patrick Mannion with influential content from the community itself. We are not abandoning independent content. We are not just focused on events, we are bringing a proven 4 year community model to our industry leading brands and are 100% focused on what the audience finds useful. We are not in the media business we are in the community business, the audience business and if we get that right the advertisers, exhibitors etc will always want to reach the right people at the right time. What we are doing is similar to what Forbes.com is doing - combining credible third party quality content with peer-to-peer community generated content - it works for everyone and thats why I think its the future of BtoB media!
ReplyDeleteI thought that's what I said, Paul. But lets talk off line so I can see what I might be missing.
ReplyDelete