I really enjoy shopping at farmer’s markets. The opportunity to connect with the people who grow the lettuce, catch the fish, craft the cheese and bake the bread is an experience far more immediate and genuine than shopping in the freeze dried, shrink-wrapped New! Improved! Fat-Free! big box stores. Real-time community, transparency, authenticity, accessibility – these are among the defining characteristics of social media-enabled conversations. 
An Interview with John Donovan
Posted by Rick Jamison on January 4th, 2010
John Donovan has spent 25 years writing about technology: twelve doing mostly semiconductor PR and an equal amount as an editor at EDN Asia, Circuits Assembly Asia, PC Fabrication Asia and Portable Design where he manned the tiller for the last four of its twelve years. John has also published two books, dozens of manuals, hundreds of articles and a rapidly-expanding library of blog posts.
In the following interview, John shares some of his thoughts on blogging, social media as it relates to engineers… and more.
Rick: As someone who has written extensively about technology from “both sides of the inbox” (editorial and semiconductor PR), what are the key changes social media has brought to the way engineers find and engage with content that’s relevant to their specific interests?
John: Most engineers already get the bulk of their information online, so they’re comfortable with the medium. Print will probably always be a better medium for reading long technical articles, but good luck with the business plan.
Engineers have always been skeptical of any information that comes from a corporate PR source, since their job is to depict a product in the best possible light, often omitting limitations that you as a designer may need to know—or burying key points in a load of marketing bumpf, which really sets an engineer’s teeth on edge. Also engineers tend to see PR people as technical lightweights, which doesn’t enhance their credibility. As an editor I’ve ended plenty of briefings with, “Send me the datasheet.”
Engineers look for advice from people they can trust, which generally means other engineers. Engineering blogs have become a very popular source of information and interchange. While corporate bloggers may be regarded with a grain of suspicion, they’re generally very well informed and highly responsive. And there are always thousands of readers who can jump in with other perspectives. By now I think most engineers track blogs that cover their design interests and follow the threads of interesting conversations.
Traditional media try to get this sort of interchange going by adding a Comments section after each article, but that doesn’t begin to keep up with the action on blogs, which are starting to create real communities of readers with shared interests. Blogs are the new water coolers, where you can kick around problems with your colleagues, who just happen to be thousands of miles away.
Rick: Why do you think so many traditional publishers have been slow to pick up on the electronic media tsunami that’s clearly washed ashore?
John: There are both generational and business reasons. Most print publications are run by older guys like me who grew up with print and paper. I wrote for a newspaper back in the ‘60s that used an old Mergenthaler linotype machine. I loved the clank of that contraption when the paper was being composed and the smell of ink when it was being printed with lead type. Going to digital prepress and printing was a real hurdle for the publisher, but they survived it. For traditional publishers, digital distribution is just a bridge too far. And when they’re finally forced to cross that bridge, they’re strangers in a strange land.
On the business side, print ads have always been the cash cow for publishers, and anything that threatens that franchise encounters resistance. Online ads are extremely attractive to advertisers because they don’t entail printing and distribution costs, therefore they’re cheap (read: low profit); they can be microtargeted; their results can be accurately measured; and they enable reader feedback, which is highly desirable. As a result they’re replacing print ads and wiping out print-based books in the process.
Finally, there’s this blogger thing—what’s that about? Anyone who can’t make that transition is drifting into the past.
Rick: You’ve been authoring a blog, Donovan’s Brain, for over two years. Why did you become a blogger and why do you continue?
John: I got extremely frustrated working for a monthly magazine that at the time only updated the online material monthly. First I hectored the web team to at least let me update the news section daily, though their home-made template wouldn’t let me upload graphics. So I figured out how to upload graphics and even videos to Google and embed HTML links to them in my stories. But even feature stories on the magazine site didn’t include embedded graphics, which was way beyond embarrassing.
Frankly I finally started my own blog on Blogger to show the web team what cool stuff you could do with a little imagination. In the process I discovered I could suddenly cover events in a timely manner and add my perspective while it still mattered, not feeling as constrained in the new format as I did in the magazine. This was probably just me crossing over the mental bridge I mentioned earlier. But once you cross over, there’s no going back.
Rick: In your experience, how is blog writing different from journalistic writing, and do you believe one has inherently more credibility and influence than the other?
John: Journalists have long been trained to “leave opinions to the opinion page and just report the facts,” as if facts were something concrete and obvious to any observer—which they rarely if ever are. What bloggers, like the best writers, add is an informed perspective, though it’s up to you to decide just how informed they are, which facts they choose to highlight or overlook, how closely they hue to the facts at hand and how logical are their conclusions. You need to exercise some judgment when you’re reading someone else’s judgment. That requires you to be a more thoughtful reader, which is a good thing. Even if you don’t agree with a writer’s perspective, just being aware of it will give you a more nuanced view of the situation.
The distinction between journalism and opinion has always been artificial, and bloggers completely cross the line. I don’t want to read some rehashed meeting notes or PR talking points. I want some background, context and help in putting a story in perspective. Blogging is simply opinionated reporting. The best bloggers are often ex-journalists, finally free to express themselves. Many journalists now also have a blog, so the distinction is getting blurrier all the time.
I don’t think one’s credibility is determined by the medium—it’s entirely dependent on the message. Bloggers contribute some of the best reporting today. If I read something that I think is quite incisive, I don’t care if it’s in a blog, the Op Ed page of the New York Times or the front page of EE Times. I’ll dial the author in on Twitter to follow their writing wherever it appears.
Rick: Finally, what is the long-term potential for social media within engineering communities – and what impediments stand between where we are today and the fulfillment of that potential?
John: Social media have a great future within the engineering community because they enable engineers to form communities with shared interests. Engineers will always prefer to consult, kvetch and kid around with other engineers.
There are probably very few engineers who aren’t already on LinkedIn, which is sort of Facebook for professionals. Aside from being the most effective way to hit the panic button if you get laid off, LinkedIn is a great way to stay connected with old colleagues and find out what it’s like to work for a potential employer. LinkedIn groups are an excellent way to get help from others working on the same technical problems that are plaguing you. Expect this to happen more and more.
A lot of companies are using Facebook to put a human face on the corporation, but I think most engineers use it mainly to stay in touch with family and friends—I certainly do. Still, it’s hard to have it both ways: presenting both a business face and a personal face at the same time. However, Facebook works well when you become friends with colleagues, so I expect engineers will increasingly take it up as they expand their social circles.
Twitter is another matter. Engineers have been slow to pick up on it. That’s changing, since Twitter can quickly point you to a lot of technical material that you might otherwise have missed. Twitter is also a great way to follow people who usually have something to say that you’d like to hear. Still, Twitter is a bit ‘out there’ for most engineers, so it may be a while before it hits an inflection point with them.
RSS
Rick,
I was asked to comment by John Donovan and I thought I would start with the irony of touting a person’s resume, in this case all print, to discuss the marketing values of electronic mediums. The irony continues as the people interviewed are all ex-out of work-print editors who would trade their blogs in a heart beat for a monthly print pub.
Another interesting point is that electronic mediums are considered so much cheaper then print – John’s simple conclusion is that it is cheaper to produce. My position, as the owner of number print pubs, is that the perceived value is so much lower it won’t command the price. I would think this obvious to a company that sells its products based on their value and not their BOM.
There also seems to be this confusion that leads are the only goal of marketing. Marketing professionals know that the goal is shareholder equity brought about by a strong perception of the future. I would grant Mr. Donovan that leads are a part of this, but I wouldn’t base the future of my company on twitters – would you?
So in conclusion, as you interview a number of ex print editors who are out of work, ask your self if they truly understand marketing. Ask yourself if the demise of EE-Times was the over investment and under performance of the web. Ask yourself if you would even know Open Systems exists without their print pubs.
RTC print publications have endured a rough economy to achieve 5% increase in revenue in 2009. And I like to think it’s because we haven’t laid everyone off and we focused on proven medium for marketing.
John Reardon
The RTC Group
You asked JohnR at RTC to comment on the interview? But wasn’t RTC your last publisher? If so, his ending comments seem a bit disingenuous.
John makes some interesting points, some of which are fair. It is hard to find a New Media guru over the age of 30 who hasn’t spent the bulk of their career on Old Media. This hardly disqualifies them from trying to decode the upheaval that’s clearly underway in the media. I don’t claim to be an expert on where it’s all going, but with an MBA in marketing and 25 years in the business, I’m not entirely ignorant of the issues, either.
We’re also not all out here looking for another print job, though better cash flow wouldn’t hurt. Some of are really enjoying trying to figure out the Rubic’s Cube that’s the current media landscape. Most of the experiments probably won’t pan out, but those that do will be templates for the future. As P.T. Barnum said, “You pay your nickel and you take your chances.”
Electronic media are unquestionably cheaper to produce than print, the question is whether advertisers are paying less for them because they know they’re cheaper to produce or because they value them less. I don’t think the answer is obvious, so I’ll split the difference with John and propose that both are true. The current recession has added impetus to the move to web advertising, since vendors are getting cheaper, and I don’t expect them to behave much differently once this is over.
I’m not predicting the death of print, just the dearth of print.
I certainly agree that lead generation isn’t the whole of marketing, but it’s the primary concern for semiconductor and software vendors. Yes, you have to sell the company before you can sell the product. But we’re talking tech trades here, not GQ; these folks aren’t selling image, they’re selling products. A print ad will get an engineer’s attention, but only online—after they’ve downloaded the datasheet and checked some trusted blogs for a critical evaluation—can you close the deal. Using print to drive people to the web—that works. Whether it’s cost effective or not is an open issue.
Like John I think it was idiotic for CMP to lay off its outstanding print editors at EE Times, cut way back on print and count on the web to take up the slack. Somebody drank too much Kool Aid and didn’t do the math. You need a balanced product mix—print, web and shows—to remain viable, and print to date has been the cash cow. To John’s credit The RTC Group has done a much better job at this than its larger competitors. However the product mix is shifting rapidly, and everyone from Rupert Murdoch to a legion of web startups is trying to rethink their strategies in a changing publishing environment. Natural selection is in full swing, and adaptation is the order of the day.
We definitely live in interesting times.
To answer John Byler first – You are correct we did have to eliminate the Portable Design franchise and John Donovan with it. We purchased the property (print, web and events) from PennWell and we were unable to turn the product profitable. This was a calculated risk, but it in no way impeaches print as the more viable marketing solution to that of web. I think even John D would admit the failure of the web activities accelerated the overall demise of the franchise.
In addressing John Donovan
Somehow I find it insulting to marketing professionals in the electronic space who develop strong marketing campaigns for such brands as Intel, Microsoft, Mentor Graphics, ARM and others that their only differential is the volume of dubious quality leads. Although I am not Gucci, I attend conferences, review industry pubs and speak with colleagues in the industry and have found the dynamic growth of the web has slowed significantly, that there is still nearly a half a billion dollars in print advertisers in embedded space and that on average web revenue is less then 15% of a media company’s gross revenue. (And this is only if you include audience generation through list rentals).
So with the VC’s licking their wounds over the money lost in web marketing, web centric companies still looking for a business model that are bankable and virtual events having the life span of a fruit fly, RTC doesn’t ask our clients to speculate their marketing dollars with a Rubic’s cube, but with proven products that have withstood the test of time.
Maybe embedded companies believe that their products, if marketed right will have features that benefit the client.
John
I didn’t mean to offend my marketing friends, who are reevaluating their strategies just like the rest of us. This is a multifaceted problem, and different interpretations lead to different conclusions. John continues to make some good points, and I continue to disagree.
I do agree that it was time to put down Portable Design in the wake of John’s considerable efforts to make it profitable. When it started Portable Design was the only book covering low-power design issues; once that became hot a lot of bigger players crowded into the space. With a finite number of ad dollars to go around, being the #3 book in a two-book market is ultimately terminal. I decided to pick up the torch with Low-Power Design, refocus an aging concept and go online only. This isn’t an approach that will support a corporate overhead, but it works for an independent. Whether it scales or not remains to be seen.
On image vs. product advertising: I understand that you have to sell the company (image) before you can sell its products. Nobody is going to stake their product’s success on a proprietary processor built by a garage shop; the choice will always be between ARM, Intel, AMD or some other trusted supplier. OTOH a good rep isn’t going to make up for junk products. Microsoft ate it big time when Vista turned out to be a dog. Intel’s Pentium floating point bug hit its stock hard. AMD’s buggy Barcelona chip just about sank the company. In the long run, however—and to John’s point—a company’s good will will pull it through the rough patches.
However I find it far from obvious that print ads are more effective at generating that good will—and long-term shareholder value—than the good opinion of the thought leaders who increasingly inhabit the blogosphere. Companies will always trumpet the features and benefits of their products in their ads, whether in print or online. Engineers will only believe them when their claims have been validated by their peers and tech editors whom they trust. Most of the latter are now found online, which is where engineers spend most of their time. Anyone wanting to reach them would do well to start there.
Moving from ads to content: people will seek out valuable content wherever it’s found, and there’s a helluva lot more of it online than could ever appear in print. The problem is that there are so many sources it’s hard to rise above the noise level; once you do, advertisers pay for the number of ‘eyeballs’ just as they pay based on your print circulation, though admittedly they pay a lot less, hence the conundrum everyone’s trying to solve.
The proliferation of excellent news sources is another factor impacting print pubs, which increasingly just stack up unread all over my office. I dropped my subscriptions to numerous magazines because I can get the same content online and much sooner that I can get it in print—especially in the case of monthlies, who are truly an endangered species in this Internet-paced world.
John makes an excellent case for the way things have worked in the past and the business problems with digital communication. Unlike him I believe there’s a profound shift underway—not a temporary blip caused by the recession—and that strategies that worked to date need to be far more innovative going forward. Bloggers and online sites are on the front lines of change, experimenting with different business strategies, not just traditional ad-based ones. If content is indeed king, the good ones will survive and prosper as the money follows them.
Let the thousand flowers bloom.
The points John D. makes about content being king and experimentation with different business models brings to mind the music industry and what they went through with the ready availability of music online. Seems like there are some real parallels with the current situation in publishing, from newspapers to books. Can we look to the music industry for answers about the future of publishing? Music artists and journalists both earn their credibility and their living by creating unique and valued content…
Anyone else find it amusing that the first great print-web debate of the New Year is occurring on a blog?
Electronics B:B is the first of the publishing sectors to go through this worldwide rationalization exercise. In fact, it’s spent the whole decade doing it as semiconductors and then EDA realized they were no longer supporting markets that sold $2000 PCs or $5000 servers but were now supporting zillions of markets with $5-$500 end product prices.
(Pubs in the enterprise software space haven’t been hit nearly so badly).
John D’s point is well taken: The conversation is now online. While print may be a nice medium (I love it) it has to have a conversational component to it (in the old days what we published in print got hashed out at live events). If you don’t, you might as well be talking to a wall.
John R is concerned that engineers aren’t really engaging in social media online and he’s largely correct. But that’s today. Marketers at Synopsys and elsewhere and many of us who just like to blather on have dived in online with both feet. It’s, for the moment, a marketing echo chamber, but it won’t remain that way for long.
So the editorial diaspora moves online and can’t make money there. This is obviously a problem. Marketers want lead-gen, lead-gen, lead-gen, which is low cost and unsexy and the new online editors haven’t built up sufficient audiences yet to deliver leads. Maybe some day, but maybe not.
I don’t have any answers except to say that looking at something from a different angle often helps. To Yvette’s point: A music-playing device that followed the Sony Walkman (the iPod) wasn’t just about playing music; it was about selling music. The Google Nexus is not just about calling people or surfing the Web; it’s about selling ads.
What is our editorial (online) content about? Training? Trying out tools? ….?
I think we have to separate that from our first tendency which is to look at online editorial content as technical information (which companies now own completely) and as watchdogs (which is vital).
That’s a separate issue.
Great comment thread, folks! Three cheers to Rick for (perhaps unwittingly) sparking it.
Wow, quite the battle royale going on here. And as usual in social media debates, some are right and some are wrong and always at the same time.
Right now I am consulting to a med-sized daily newspaper struggling with the new media question, and here is the thing that’s causing so much consternation for them. Print ads, while more expensive, are still more profitable than online. In fact, this paper is making $35,000 a month with online revenue while expending $37,000 to provide the service. A $2,000 loss every month. While marketers may like the lower cost, the experiment is not working out for the publishing world. That’s the economic issue.
But there’s even a bigger issue: Advertising does not really bring in leads, qualified or otherwise.
At one time, advertising was an influential medium, but social media pretty much killed that idea. Now it is possible for customers to see and ad and do their own research online. It is that research that creates the decision to purchase or seek information. Advertising has become a way for merchants and vendors to solidify a buying decision. If you already decided to buy a product or service, seeing ad ad made you feel better about the decision. If you have not yet made the decision, and ad won’t influence you one way or another. And if you have decided against the product or service, you laugh at the ad calling anyone who fell for that crap stupid.
That’s not to say that advertising isn’t important, but it has lost it’s ability to create decisions.
So buyers are now faced with using online content and even print content to make their decisions, and like JD points out, it’s not the blogging or the corporate insider that is going to provide acceptable content. That content comes from the “out-of-work” journalists and independent bloggers that people trust. Right now, that kind of content is free, but it won’t last. Someone is going to have to pay the trusted sources to keep writing and not expect special treatment.
Don’t expect the slack to be picked up by engineers inside the corporations either, they are both legally and emotionally constrained from making public endorsements.
The wheel has not finished turning yet for media’s course correction, but it is almost there. Some companies — very few in fact — are realizing they are going to have to become better corporate citizens for the sake of their industry and become not just advertisers but patrons of journalism.
The challenge is that we still seem to be coming back to either content consumers (engineers) or industry participants (corporations/businesses) to pay the bills. Seems like a new version of advertising and subscription models. What about thinking beyond that? That’s why I brought up the music industry scenario.
Yet another idea was posed at a Congressional hearing on the future of newspapers a few months ago: The publishers and media representatives speaking at the hearing targeted the content aggregators as being a possible solution (and part of the issue). They were tossing around some sort of paid licensing model to distribute the content. Merit/no merit to the idea?
This is an excellent discussion, and there are elements of truth in all that has been written. For me as a salesperson for both online and print, the importance of branding has become diminished in favor of the current desire of companies to receive leads/future clients. The other intangible that isn’t really quantifiable is how someone who reads print may simply google the company after reading a given article or looking at ad, versus following any identifying url which would tie it to a measurable response rate. While online and social media are here to stay, I don’t believe print is dead. As humans we are tactile by nature. As Marshall McLuhan observed in 1967, the Medium is the Massage, valid today because the medium–be it print, or online–is what “shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.” No doubt McLuhan is laughing from the grave, as his publication is now available as a download for the Kindle.
I don’t think any of are predicting the death of print, just its decline, which means an old business model needs to be retooled. What we’re witnessing is the acendancy of digital communications, for which a new business model needs to be created.
Print pubs have always been supported by advertising, which is exploding online–and shortly on portable devices, where Google, Microsoft and others are placing multi-billion dollar bets. Part of the problem print is having is ad dollars moving online. But to Lou’s point the old push ad model–paid, one-way promotional communication–is dying in the world of Web 2.0.
Online the interrupt-driven model–basically passive consumption of packaged content–is being replaced by conversation, connections and shared perceptions. Vendors have lost control of their corporate images to the blogosphere, not to mention Google. To Karen’s point, it’s no wonder that companies are spending a lot less now on branding and hiring “community managers” like Brian.
Ads will continue to work in the B:C space, where demand creation is the order of the day–buy Snuggies, ZhuZhu Pets or some other junk that you didn’t know you needed. In the B:B space–electronics at least–you can spend $5K on a full page print ad telling engineers about your low-power CPLD, but unless they’re in the market for one in the near future, your money is largely wasted.
When they are in the market, engineers will Google what they need and your product will show up along with those of all your competitors. Then they’ll read articles about it in tech trade magazines or sites, check blog conversations, download the datasheet and finally make a decision, on which your expensive ad six months earlier had little impact. Better to spread your ad spend over several months on well targeted, relatively inexpensive online ads and manage the resulting online discussions as best you can.
The Music Industry Model
I don’t think the music industry model works in our space, Yvette. The music industry moguls saw their physical media sales being killed off by online sales and piracy. First they turned their lawyers loose to try to stanch the piracy. Then they had to find a way to sell online. Apple supplied the outlet with iTunes.
iTunes isn’t a publisher but a distributor, and a dominant one. People are willing to pay their prices because (1) they’re reasonably cheap and (2) to date they haven’t really had an alternative. iTunes will have serious competition shortly, and their nice little monopoly profits will take a serious hit.
Apple has a great scam going with iTunes, whose downloads only work on Apple products. iTunes is a great way to sell iPods and provide the content they needed to hit critical mass, which in turn sells more iPods. Vendors may see a bright idea here for themselves, but I don’t see any lessons for bloggers or online journalists.
Vendor-Supported Sites
Since ads won’t pay the bills, many of us look to corporate sponsors to help do so–in the case of Low-Power Design, Mentor Graphics and Silicon Labs have stepped up to the bat, just as Synopsys, ARM, Mentor and others support John Blyler’s and Ed Sperling’s sites. Lou refers to such companies as “patrons of journalism,” which is how I think of them, too.
Ry Schwark at Mentor was clear that Mentor recognizes that tech journalism is going through a turbulent change and Mentor would like to help support tech journalists who have something to contribute. Hopefully they’ll generate active communities with which Mentor would like to be associated. I think this is quite forward looking and makes them a good corporate citizen.
Does that mean that I’ll always give Mentor a glowing write up? Absolutely not. If they come out with a product that’s not ready for prime time, I’ll say so–though perhaps nicely. I’ll leave it to John Cooley to slap ‘em around.
Paid Content
The Wall Street Journal can get away with this, since most of their subscribers expense it anyway. The New York Times tried it and quickly backed off. There’s no way I can see that most blogs and online mags can charge for content, though some do charge monthly subscription fees. We’re not producing songs that people will pay to download. We’re writing up events and packaging them with opinions that readers are very unlikely to pay to read. Sorry about that.
Instead of a pay wall, the Financial Times has launched metered access, where you can read so much before having to pay. According to Journalism Online, “more than 1,300 publishers have partnered with the company, and the first tests of the paid content network will start in coming weeks. In almost all cases, publishers will start by giving visitors access to 10 or 15 articles for free before asking them to pay. The idea is that frequent visitors to a site are demonstrating they value a brand’s content and are the ones most likely to pay a fee for unfettered use of the site.”
It’s hard to see how any but the big dogs can get away with this, but I could be wrong. It looks to be a viable model if you have sufficiently compelling content.
Content Aggregators and Evil Publishers
Personally I think the HuffPost is the future of journalism. It started as a blog with only aggregated content (photo, teaser paragraph and a link). Now they have a legion of unpaid bloggers who write some excellent stuff–including secretaries of state, ex-presidents and foreign heads of state. They’re a combination of fresh and aggregated editorial. According to Forbes, the HuffPost is profitable–from ads–and making so much money that they’re thinking of an IPO. If you get enough eyeballs, the money will follow. But try to do it without the sleazy photos, please.
Charging to link is Rupert Murdoch’s latest brainstorm. If you want to link to a story in one of his outlets, it’s going to cost you. If this flies bloggers will obviously stop linking to stories in Murdoch papers; it it catches on widely, we’re all going to be in trouble.
Charging to link is a dagger aimed at the heart of the Internet, which is all about the free exchange of information and opinions, which in turn is made possible by links. Murdoch sees this strategy as aimed a content aggregators, whom he considers thieves. Personally I think the whole idea is evil, but it may make business sense if it doesn’t generate huge blowback, which I clearly hope it does. Just don’t try this at home, kids.
Still, the days of free content are numbered. If you have compelling content, you may be able to charge for it, and conversely. I predict that a limited number of outstanding sites will make money from content, while the rest will make do with ads and pray for enlightened sponsors.
Interesting discussion.
I think there are two key issues driving advertising spend, measurability and price. Price is the obvious one, but I think less important. As we get better and better business intelligence, we are more interested in learning exactly what our marketing dollars get us when we spend them. Corporations aren’t keen these days on taking someone’s word for it. “You’ll get great brand awareness if you advertise in Norwegian Moose Quarterly! Trust me! No, I have no idea who looked at your ad or if they even noticed it, but it’s great, I swear!”
Which leads to my second point, brand building advertising is overrated in deep technology spaces. As others here have pointed out, engineers dig in and evaluate. Advertising that talks about what you can do for them works very well on the internet for those who have figured out how to deliver it. Engineers can then come to conclusions about what you bring to the table for them. Those conclusions form your brand far more than advertising does. Brand bubbles up from what you do and how well you do it. Consumer branding is a far away land for us.
Advertising serves the purpose of posing the public question, “hey, did you know…?” But if you evoke interest what follows is a trip to google to find out more. All of your beautiful copy aside. Your banner click is just the first part of an engineer figuring it out for themselves. But the banner click is often a better starting point for that journey than a print ad.
I’ll leave those here with ink stained hands to fight out the other questions, but from a corporate spend stand point, we want measurable and known results, not faith.
To JD’s point, I can pretty much guarantee that print is not going away, just as TV, radio, live theater, greeting cards or any other medium has not disappeared with the ascendency of a new medium. The priorities just need changing as we all do.
The other factor which continues to be important to companies are supporting web sites/print publications by voting with their advertising $$ is the issue of objectivity. If a blogger is being paid by Mentor or Synopsys, where is the support for editorial objectivity? I guarantee that if a paid blogger starts talking about how xxyyzz company is falling short for an extended period of time that at some point that company will ultimately vote differently, in terms of support. Then where is that individual blogger in terms of his bread and butter? That is why Chip Design has been successful, so far. The editorial staff remain independent from sales, although there is definitely a symbiotic relationship.
This discussion just keeps going and going… Interestingly, it’s not taking place on Facebook or an individual/publisher’s blog. (At least, not this time.) But let’s leave the ramifications of that observation for another time.
Yvette makes an key point about “other” business models. I’ve been thinking along the same lines. It’s pretty much a free-for-all at this point, where perhaps the greatest risk is thinking inside-the-box. Look for new business models as the year unfolds, not only from me (and Ed) but from others who are anxious to cross beyond traditional boundries.