Deep or wide? The existential question for business media
B2B publishers face an imminent choice, argues Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes. Should they chase a programmatic strategy, or should they double down on the width of their offering?
I wonder if fans of independent publishing will look back upon the last decade as the final golden age of independent media.
After two days hearing from some of the biggest players in B2B, I now think that’s at least a possibility.
Last week saw the first B2B Media Strategies conference in London. It featured executives from many of the world’s biggest business publishers sharing their own lessons and strategies. And while they didn’t supply all the answers (these type of conferences never do), they certainly refocused the questions.
Interesting article Tim.
Media arbitrage sounds like a good business, but it presumes that a B2B media company such as IDG knows much more about its audience than some other ad broker, such as Google. I’m not sure about that. As Eric Schmidt put it more than five years ago, “We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”
For publishers, quality journalism (aka content) is still the not-so-secret sauce.
Thanks for the article Tim – thought provoking.
I think you’ve nailed it in that small, independent publishers that don’t have the scope or knowledge to play in the programmatic space need to be augmenting their mix to develop monetized services such as events, work shops, custom content and market research.
If you’ve developed a great masthead with a loyal readership and committed advertisers then it’s about identifying how you can continue to bring those communities together in meaningful and profitable ways, ideally by identifying gaps in the market where there’s uncontested space.
Agree about the quality news and insight being the sauce, not convinced about programmatic for B2B just yet. As you say, most publishers are fairly fuck-witted when it comes to tech, and many of their advertisers are less sophisticated. But quality content is key. Mainly because the web is awash with junk. Many digital newspapers are full of clickbait. Print editions are only slightly better. Strange at a time when people are hungry for quality news and are addicted to their phones – and through their phones many have become addicted to work. By covering niches honestly and succinctly, trade publishers definitely have a chance. Especially if they can work out how to monetise the amplification via B2B focused networks such as linkedin, which is where many are seeing the greatest shares. But programmatic economics do not work at low to mid scale especially when B2B pubs can charge a premium for a niche, qualified audience (providing it hasn’t been robbed already). Better to reach 100 people that matter to an advertiser, than 100,000 that don’t. But that doesn’t really work even at $100 CPM level for websites with maybe 200k uniques/month. Alone that would pay one editor and a couple of part timers, but nobody else. And for many B2B websites, 200k monthly uniques is a dream. Could some get into arbitrage? Maybe. But only a handful of larger players and yes, good luck versus Google. The rush for scale and focus on clicks by global mainstream media only fuels bait and BTL-bait opinion pieces (‘feminists’ versus ‘white middle class males’ currently works well for the guardian, for example). All of which increases the opportunity at B2B level.
AFAIC th’ats the best answer so far!