I normally try to focus on the European electronics media, but the changes across the pond at UBM Electronics are so far-reaching that I thought I should discuss them in Napier News. I’m on my way back from holiday, so haven’t seen what anyone else has said, but have a 13-hour flight to think about the changes.
The main news is that UBM is closing all of its print titles in the electronics sector, which means no more print copies of EDN in the USA. Test & Measurement World online is also closing, although visitors will be routed to the T&M Design Center on EDN.com. Kathy Astromoff is also leaving UBM.
So is this just a reorganisation, or is there something deeper happening? The key paragraph of the announcement from UBM says:
“UBM Tech is moving to a new community-focused strategy that unites our world-class industry events with our digital brands and supports them both with advanced analytics technology to provide members a continuous information and experience based on shared interests and peer-to-peer learning. In doing so, UBM Tech events will flourish beyond their live exhibition dates through like-minded UBM Tech digital brands that will keep the interaction and discussions alive before, during and after the events themselves.”
UBM has been talking about a “community-focussed” strategy and “peer-to-peer learning” for some time – certainly these were two of their themes at electronica last year. But will this work? The challenges of getting engineers to talk about technical issues on a social network have been discussed many times: and there is a huge difference between getting UGC on Raspberry Pi projects for home and hardware for safety critical systems. Let’s be honest, most of the content that is going to apply to large customers is going to be coming from component manufacturers or distributors, not engineers working at customers. It is going to be really hard to achieve a transfer of even a small amount of content generation from editors to engineers. And surely too much content that is written to promote a particular component manufacturer’s products is going to devalue the site.
However, I believe that UBM will be the first electronics industry publisher to make a decent investment in analytics (read “marketing automation”) tools. If they can really understand their readers, this will be a huge advantage. Just imagine being able to target engineers that have read a number of articles about a specific topic: that’s going to be far more effective than the current “tick any boxes that apply” approach.
UBM has a huge advantage because of the sheer volume of traffic across its electronics sites. And whilst it seems clear that they are going to need more UGC to supplement limited editorial resources, I don’t see any plan to move away from having quality content generated by their team of top-quality journalists. The question isn’t really whether the strategy will succeed or not: it’s how far they can move from the push model of traditional publishing to one that engages readers and takes advantage of their contributions.
Perhaps the biggest questions are going to be about the future of European publications. Its much harder for them to switch from journalism to an interactive community as their audiences are limited by language. The number of engineers that can interact on a German-language site is much lower than those who are fluent in English. But the size of the electronics industry is just the same for both audiences. If it’s going to be hard for UBM to build substantial UGC, the challenge is an order of magnitude higher for most European sites. So don’t expect European sites to follow UBM’s lead: simple maths says that in Europe we’ll see a more conventional strategy over the next few years from most of our publishers.
Update: UBM has also decided to quietly cancel Design East. Whilst I’m sure that UBM Electronics will continue to be a strong publisher and event organiser, it does seem that these changes are as much cutbacks as they are the reflection of a new strategy.
Hello Mike:
It was with great surprise to see this announcement. Many key leaders of UBM were let go in this reorganization.
I think this is a significant change for the industry. What’s next? I think the next logical step will be for companies like Digi-Key, Element 14/Newark and Mouser to merge with companies like UBM.
Here is the issue:
Suppliers are looking at optimizing advertising spending. Results, Results, Results are their mantra. The best results is of course product sales. Suppliers look towards initial product sales as key business metrics. (Typically called “Design-in” or “Design-Win”). It is difficult for marketers to communicate to upper management about “Click Through Rates” and “impressions” mapping these to business results.
The old school catalog distributors are re-inventing themselves. They are demanding content from their suppliers. They need excellent credible content to drive traffic to their websites. These distributors also put a lot of pressure on their suppliers to transfer content to their websites.
To deliver “neutral” credible content, distributors have been developing networks of consulting writers to support the content development. Why not link up with UBM?
Suppliers, very willingly, provide the content distributors want. Why? Because content on a distributor website will not only build demand but also sell product. This is the downfall of publications like UBM. Since they do not directly sell product, they are becoming less relevant to the suppliers.
And to customers? Websites like Digi-Key are becoming the go-to place for products. If they are supplemented with the materials needed to help customers design with the product they are purchasing, wouldn’t that be the best for them. Why read an article in one location and buy in another?
I think UBM’s idea of developing community is a good one. Providing educational services and training is key for the design engineer. But I don’t think they can do it alone.
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the interesting and insightful comments. I agree with your view, and perhaps the key to the future is circulation. As it becomes more difficult for publishers to build and maintain circulation databases, the distributors will be increasingly attractive partners: they have the ability to build fabulous databases of engineers and purchasers. And switching an element of marketing budgets from earned to owned media is a trend we see across many industries. However, today I don’t think all distributors are doing a good job of executing this strategy.
Whilst it makes sense for distributors to grow their share of the “publishing industry” in electronics, in Europe it seems that most of the distributors are struggling to produce that high-quality, credible content. There are examples of some great content, and there are examples of publications that are just bullet-point lists of features for suppliers’ new products. This isn’t adding value!
Personally I think distributors fall into the trap of just putting in a 1/2 page piece about a supplier’s new product to make the supplier happy, rather than to try to create outstanding content that will grow their sales. Generating great content is hard. And whilst some suppliers will help the distributor, others can fail to meet either the quality or the neutrality that will transform distributors’ publications from promotional vehicles to useful tools that engineers will pick up and read. Having said this, there are already some great examples of where distributors go way beyond anything that could be achieved by a conventional publisher: for example I’ve known distributors to create custom evaluation kits to supplement great content in their publications.
Publishers are already offering custom publishing services: ARM’s work with UBM is a good example. I completely agree that distributors should, and will, do more custom publishing.
In the long term I guess the question is whether today’s publishers will win the majority of custom publishing work, whether entrepreneurial freelance journalists will be employed direct, or (dare I say it!) whether PR agencies will be the partners of choice. As publishers shed journalists, agencies are overtaking publications with the amount they spend each month on freelance and in-house journalists. Perhaps we will look back in a few years and realise that it’s the organisations that are increasing the number of journalists they use, rather than those who are making redundancies to cut costs, who will be best positioned to take advantage of opportunities in the future.