The electronica 2004 award for honesty should go to VNU Italy. They are to launch a electronics industry list rental service around March/April 2005. Although theoretically you can rent electronics names from them now, the honest Italians have admitted that it is pretty much impossible to get the list you need with the current setup.
With Italy growing in importance – according to some analysts it has overtaken the UK and is now the #2 electronics component market in Europe – this is great news. Even better, the list is opt-in, and you can rent email addressess as well as postal addresses. The only catch is a €6000 minimum annual advertising spend across all the VNU industrial titles – something that shouldn’t prove too big a hurdle for most clients.