Media

The media business has always been pretty easy to understand. They generate content and package it either for offline or online use. Advertisers pay the freight (for the most part) and it's pretty simple. It's mostly been branding oriented advertising. But it's changing. Advertisers are spending more on pay per click and other internet-based direct response advertising and less on traditional print media or banner ads. Direct response is increasing in value and some of the media companies have evolved to offer white paper programs, webcasts, and other lead generation types of activities.

But it's still not enough. You've seen a lot of consolidation in the space, as folks like CMP, IDG and CNET have acquired many niche properties to increase their heft and provide a more compelling platform to meet the needs of their increasingly large advertisers. Big is the new small in media as well - though that's not really novel. It's been happening for quite a while.

Still it's not enough, so inevitably the big tech media players are going to need to diversify their revenue streams. They can no longer just depend on the advertisers (I mean vendors) to pay the freight. They are going to need to increasingly go to the buyer and offer something of value and figure out how to charge for it.

We're seeing this already. Light Reading (which was acquired by CMP about a year ago) has been doing this since they were founded. They offer a service called the "Insider" for each of their properties that provides for-pay research reports. Subscriptions run about $1500 annually for an individual and you get either monthly or bi-monthly reports. Dark Reading, their security site, has an Insider offering. You can check it out here. I haven't seen any of the reports, but I did write a few for Light Reading back in 2002. There is more there there than a trade pub blurb (or even overview) and provides a good primer on many of the markets that are important to end users.

CMP is not done either. They've also introduced a for-pay offering under the Network Computing brand called Network Computing Analytics (here). These reports are based around a user survey and some value-add analysis. The reports cost $499. I've got no idea how well these reports sell, but CMP is rolling out more rather than less - so that is some indication of early traction.

CSO Magazine also has a research offering called the CSO Executive Council (here), which is more of a syndicated research offering (like Gartner, META, Forrester) and priced accordingly (I believe membership is like $20,000 a year). They do group research and have a conference and networking events and the like.

IDG, CNET and TechTarget will be getting into the paid reports business. It's not an if, it's a when. They may even look to hire some outside talent to build these offerings because these are not traditional media businesses, magazine publishers are not really well suited to run these businesses. It'll be a shock to the system for them because research is a fundamentally different business, with different pay scales, different sales models, different editorial expectations and different value propositions. It's media, but it's not.

I get that Security Incite is a media business. Not quite yet, but I'm heading in that direction. I'm new media (Media 2.0), but media nonetheless. I welcome the eventual competition with big tech media. That will force differentiation and focus my efforts. Competition is good. Bring 'em on.