Our recent survey of European electronics publications has thrown up some interesting information about who is spending money on advertising. We asked publications where their advertising revenue came from, and the results were very interesting. The share of spend was:
- Distributors – 31%
- Semiconductor manufacturers- 21%
- Other component manufacturers (passive, power supply, connectors, etc)- 23%
- Tools vendors (including software) – 12%
- Other- 13%
The component manufacturers (adding semiconductor and other manufacturers) totalled 44%, with the spend roughly equally split between semiconductors and other components. This isn’t a surprise as, although there are more of the “other” companies, many of the bigger spenders are semiconductor manufacturers.
Distributors were responsible for almost a third of publishers’ revenue: this is an impressive total as the number of distributors is much smaller than the number of manufacturers. But with the challenge of differentiating distributors, the limited loyalty and the strong advertising presence of companies such as Digi-Key, distributors clearly need to spend significant amounts to maintain market share.
Tools and software accounted for 12%: this is a good number for a sector that has a reputation of not wanting to pay for advertising and represents a decent proportion of publications’ income.
Although there isn’t anything too surprising in these results, it’s interesting to see who is spending the advertising money. Perhaps the best news is that publications aren’t reliant on one sector of the electronics industry for advertising, making their businesses a little more stable and secure.
The survey did find some surprising results so if you’ve not seen it yet, click now to read European Publishing Myths Smashed with Electronics Media Survey.