Eng Technica launches without advertising. What’s wrong with advertising? Where do I begin? Let me start with my entry into publishing in 1995.
By the mid 90s, you could say business to business media, AKA industry media, was broken. But that would imply that it was once whole and working.
B2B media, which relies primarily on advertising for revenue, can only work for the advertiser. B2B publishers may promise a church and state separation between editorial and advertising, that their editorial vision remains pure, untainted by advertiser pressure. However, that is a promise more honored in the breach.
B2B media coverage of an industry may start with the premise of fair and comprehensive coverage but the advertisers in that industry will make their interests known in not-so-subtle ways, and publishers will fall back to favoring the advertisers over everyone else.
This system, compromised as it was, worked as a business for a number of years. B2B was a lucrative business in the early 90s. B2B print magazines and trade shows proliferated. Even though the Internet was gathering steam, most content was still published on a printed page. And every printed page was backed up with an ad. It was Google that upset all of that. Not only were people getting their information from Google but Google monetized its search by offering advertising. It was sponsored links at first, but soon enough it was banner advertising. Looking back on it, it seems as if overnight, the search giant had become an advertising giant. It was B2B media that suffered the most. Every company that had been advertising in trade magazines began to do Google ads, which were less expensive and automated. You could launch an ad campaign in the middle of the night and never have to talk to a sales rep. A trickle of marketing dollars turned into a torrent. Unable to survive on the few marketing dollars left over, many industry publications closed their doors. The biggest engineering publication, Machine Design, published by Penton, became a shell of its former self. Eventually, Penton filed for bankruptcy in 2010. The B2B media that survived became increasingly desperate. With banner ads now at rock bottom (Google ads were selling for $3 to $4 per thousand) when at the height of B2B, they could command more than ten times that. under $10 CPM). It was not sustainable. With the bottom falling out of the advertising market, what was there to sell?
