New Tech acquires Electronica (Israel)
New-Tech magazine continues its aggressive growth in the Israeli electronics media by purchasing Electronica magazine. The title already reaches an impressive 30K Israeli engineers, and this will further strengthen the title. New Tech Magazines (the publisher) also publishes a military and microwave title, addressing some of the key applications in the Israeli market.
Although this pretty much puts us back to the old situation of two titles in Israel, the acquisition is likely to continue to propel New Tech forward. Although Israel is a small country, the amount of high-technology development in the country is likely to support two publishers, although with a larger circulation, it will be interesting to see if New-Tech Magazine can translate this into a majority of the advertising revenue.
Reed to close EPE
Although not as high-profile as the closure of EPN France, Reed has also announced that they will be closing EPE at the end of the year. Whilst this decision still leaves Spain with a reasonable number of titles – unlike France – this is another disappointing move, particularly as the industry appears to be emerging from the economic downturn.
EDN Europe to switch to all-digital distribution
Although not the first title to have 100% digital circulation (Electronic Design Europe has been digital-only for some years), the decision by Reed to switch EDN Europe to all-digital distribution will have a major impact on the European electronics media.
It’s disappointing to see Reed make such major cutbacks at a time when the industry appears to be recovering, but at least EDN Europe has escaped the fate of EPN France. Reed has also taken a realistic look at advertising rates, slashing them by two thirds, although the title will charge a premium for rich media and video content in the advert.
Of course the cut in advertising price is initially demanded because the circulation will, at first, fall dramatically (the digital circulation is currently only around 11K), but Reed confidently predict the circulation will more than double by the end of 2010. The good news is that Reed will continue to invest in high-quality circulation, promising that they will retain a BPA audit.
If Reed can create a business model that provides a significantly lower cost-per-thousand than print titles – and they certainly should do as the cost of digital distribution is so much less than printing and posting a hard copy - the move to digital circulation could be a success.
Record submissions for DATE 2010
Despite the recent gloomy news about trade show attendance, it is clear that companies in our sector still believe that events are a great promotional vehicle. The organisers of DATE 2010, which will be held from 8th to 12th March in the Dresden Congress Centre, Germany, have announced a record number of submissions for the event, with 980 papers submitted for consideration. Hopefully this is a sign of confidence, not only in conferences and trade shows, but also in the likelihood of recovery for both the industry and the economy in general.
Large drop in visitors to productronica
It’s clearly not a good time for trade shows. ESC UK was disappointing, and now the big manufacturing show, productronica has announced a 30% drop in visitors compared with the last show in 2007 (28,000 vs. 40,514 in 2007). The fact that attendance fell is not a surprise, given the current economic climate, but the size of the drop is concerning.
Not surprisingly restrictions on travel had a significant effect on attendance, with around 11,700 foreign visitors, whereas 2007 saw around 18,200 non-Germans attend: a drop of 35%.
There was a little good news, with the fall in exhibitor numbers around 20% – dropping from 1,477 in 2007 to 1,150 this year. Clearly the trade show is not dead in Europe, and suppliers understand the benefit of meeting potential customers face-to-face at events. I’m sure that visitor numbers will recover in 2011, assuming that the economy is in better shape, but it will be interesting to see if visitor numbers approach the level of 2007. People, particularly in Germany, still use trade shows as part of the way that they do business, and this isn’t going to stop in the next few years. I’m confident that the show will return to its former glory, but with the number of exhibitors tied closely to the number of visitors, it is important that attendance jumps up significantly in 2011, otherwise the show could begin a period of slow decline.
Outram “highly commended” in Electrical Industry Awards
Congratulations to Outram Research, whose PM7000 power analyser was ‘Highly Commended’ in the Electrical Industry Awards Test & Measurement category. Outram is a fairly new client for Napier, and we’re delighted that they have done so well in such a prestigious award. Many congratulations from all of us at Napier to Outram on their well-deserved success!
Industry forecast seminar planned for London and Geneva
Future Horizons has announced that their Industry Forecast Seminar for 2010 will be held at two different locations: London on 26th January 2010 and Geneva, Switzerland on 27th January 2010.
Inware tags adverts
Inware is promoting a new way to create an immediate electronic link between readers of print titles and advertisers. The publisher is encouraging advertisers to include an electronic tag that can be snapped by a camera on a smart phone and used to jump immediately to relevant online content.
This is a great move, and with the increasing use of internet enabled phones from blackberries to iPhones, is likely to be something that will grow and grow. Our research has shown that when reading magazines engineers are often not close to a PC, and don’t like to type in long URLs into their phones to get information. This approach bridges the gap, and unlike other Microsoft technologies is available for smart phones running a wide range of different OSs.
I’d bet on adoption of this technology growing pretty quickly across all markets, although in industries such as ours, where the delivery of detailed technical information is important, the technology looks particularly applicable. Kudos to Inware for being an early adopter!
Electroniques reveals Editors in Chief
François Gauthier has been named as Editor in Chief of the new publication Electroniques, which was formed by merging Electronique and Electronique International. His responsibilities start with the first issue of 2009, due to be published on 20th January.
At the same time, Pascal Coutance has been named Editor in Chief “délégué”, responsible for the development of the Electronique.biz website. Pascal has been charged with development of other online channels, such as mobile and introducing new advertising formats. Interesting he will also define a strategy for for new products that are either chargeable as premium content or reserved for magazine subscribers. We’re promised an updated site will be launched at the start of 2010.
It’s taken a little while to get these two editorial positions confirmed, although I don’t read anything into this delay. I am, however, interested that there are clear plans to put some kind of paywall around content on the web, and wonder how easily this can be done. By limiting people who can access content, you’re going to limit page – and therefore advertising – impressions, so any such move must be made with care, otherwise it could end up reducing, rather than increasing overall revenue. Keep checking back for more information on how this project develops!
PCIM China 2010 – call for papers
Mesago Messe, the organisers of PCIM China have issued a call for papers. Submissions are due by 16th November 2009.
IEF sets date for 2010
Future Horizons, organiser of the International Electronics Forum (IEF) has announced that the 2010 event will be held from 5th to 7th May 2010 in Dresden, Germany. With so much changing happening in the industry, and hopefully some solid signs of recovery, the 2010 event should be a great success.
ICC Media launch lead generation programme
ICC Media is offering lead generation programmes on their Embedded-know-how.com portal. The packages are designed for a range of different marketing materials such as white papers, webinars and videos, and include promotion of the item on both the home page of the portal as well as in two issues of their 30K circulation newsletter.
Clearly advertisers increasingly want tangible results and greater accountability from their campaigns, and I’d expect more publishers to offer such services. Whilst the ICC package is a relatively small adder on the cost of hosting the material on the website, they are not offering a guaranteed number of leads. Whilst this means that they will be able to focus on delivering high-quality, I’m sure as the lead-generation market becomes more competitive, there will be pressure to offer a guaranteed maximum price per lead. By being one of the first to offer lead generation – along with larger sites such as ElectronicsWeekly and Elektroniknet – I’d expect ICC to build valuable knowledge that will help ensure their lead generation package remains competitive as others enter the field.
ESC UK 2009 results
Although I did find one or two exhibitors that were reasonably pleased with the event, I think it is fair to say that overall ESC UK 2009 was pretty disappointing. As always the conference provided quality, valuable technical content, but why were the conference attendees not encouraged to visit the exhibition? A packed programme, and a layout that meant the conference attendees did not walk past any booths on the way to lunch or drinks meant that exhibitors missed out - and with some great booths, the conference attendees missed out as well.
I understand that although the paid for conference attracted a respectable 81 delegates, the main exhibition only pulled in just over 520 visitors across two days, despite attracting a total of over 1600 registrations prior to and at the event. The figures haven't been officially released, but I'm pretty confident that these are accurate numbers. With over 1500 attendees in 2008, it appears that the move to Farnborough was a disaster.
The show didn't appear to attract committed support from exhibitors prior to the event, as many told me they only signed up when offered a special deal a week or two before the show, although it was good to see commitment on the days of the show as all the booths were well staffed.
Personally I really hope next year's event is a success. I'm not convinced about the choice of venue - whatever the actual numbers it was clear to anyone at the show that engineers didn't flock to Farnborough. But the UK does need shows, not only as a vehicle to market products, but also to educate engineers. Even if the economy improves, it's a tough job, but hopefully TechInsights can convince engineers they should attend, and convince potential exhibitors that the show floor will be packed!
Editor interview - Andre Rousselot
Why did you decide to buy EE Times Europe and MWEE only a few years after selling your magazine to CMP (now TechInsights)?
Although it seems to be only a few years, it has actually been 9 years! At the time (November 2000) when CMP acquired EBP, CMP desperately wanted to have European magazines to compete with Reed globally. Now as CMP/Techinsights / EETimes Group have realigned their business, they feel that they need to concentrate on their home market and work globally with affiliates ( in Europe, Asia, Japan).
What are the advantages of you owning the European titles rather than managing the publishing of them within TechInsights?
There are many: we’ll be able to make strategic decisions on our own, adapt the publications to the customer needs, and make long term investments such as the one we have already launched to create a new web site.
How will the acquisition change the way that the European titles are sold in the USA?
There will be no change at all as we always had our own sales team in the US, with Todd Bria on the West, Steve Priessman in the Midwest and East and Jim Lees covering Atlantic states.
What benefits will European advertisers see from the change of ownership?
We’ll be more Europe centric and will be looking at targeting the editorial content to the needs of our European readers both on line and in print. Also, we’ll invest more into readership acquisition and qualification.
You purchased the European DesignLines, which have a global audience, but TechInsights has retained Embedded Systems Europe, which is a European publication. Can you explain why you did this?
The Design Lines we have kept in our portfolio do address the European market and even if by essence these micro sites can be seen globally, the content is aimed at our core European readership. Embedded Systems Europe has been changed to ESD (UK) with a UK only circulation. Techinsights have a core competence in the Embedded field with a number of ESC events around the world and ESD fits nicely into their portfolio.
When do you think there will be a noticeable upturn in the European electronics advertising market?
The market is still very much depressed and advertising budgets have been cut to a minimum. However, we see some signs of an upturn online and 2010 should be much better online than 2009. With regards to print we’ll probably see much more activity in the second half of 2010 with the electronica 2010 exhibition being a key driver.
What’s your view of companies that don’t advertise, but expect their PR to be covered in your titles?
There are 2 different categories in such companies: the first one consists of all the small companies that think they cannot afford advertising and these do some PR which we are happy to publish to inform our readers about start ups and new technologies. The second category is more of a problem as they have money, have an extended PR department and expect their PR to be published but do not support the trade press with advertising. These companies in the end only hurt themselves as they do not take advantage of a medium that can help them create more brand awareness among the specifiers and buyers who are the publications’ readers. Plus the cost of an advertising program in trade publications is relatively small when you compare it with other expenses these companies make. If these companies believe in PR and in the magazines that publish them they ought to do some advertising. If they don’t they may find that in the medium term there will be no publications to publish their PR in.
What is the one thing you'd like to change about the way companies do PR and marketing in the electronics industry?
The one thing most companies seem to have forgotten about is that we are all in the same ecosystem: publishers create reader communities who buy companies’ products. A recent study by our partner is Asia Global Sources has shown that even in the Google age, brand is the key to success: engineers type in brands into the Google search engine rather than key words. And how do you get brand recognition? Mostly by advertising in print and online.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
Listening to music – mostly classical, walking in open nature, mountains etc. Also I tend to spend a great deal of my free time working on the renovation of our second home in Périgord, France and visiting wineries in Burgundy, and Bergerac which has some top notch and relatively little known producers.
What's your favourite gadget?
I am not very good at gadgets and I am not sure if I actually own any other than a couple of digital cameras and an iTouch MP3 player which I rarely ever use.
Call for papers - RTIC
The IET, organisers of RTIC 2010, has issued a call for papers. The conference welcomes submissions discussing more efficient traffic management, public transport and information systems.
EPD adds white paper hosting
EPD has launched a white papers section on the EPDonthenet.net website. The new section allows engineers to run a keyword search for white papers, something that I’m sure will be an interesting service. Although Google remains the first port of call for many engineers looking for technical information, the need for specific, detailed information often means they end up searching several manufacturers’ sites. If the service takes off it could provide a valuable resource for engineers as well as an efficient way to promote products. As hosting is free, I see no reasons why companies would not choose to include their white papers on the EPD website.
ISS 2010
Semi has announced the programme for ISS 2010. The theme of the event will be “Building on Sustainability”.
Weka confirms future for Energie&Technik
Claiming the first issue was a “tremendous success”, Weka has announced that Energie&Technik will continue publication in 2010. Issues are scheduled for March 10th, May 31st, July 16th and October 1st. At times like these, which present huge challenges for publishers, it’s great to see Weka launching new titles and being rewarded for their confidence.
Google drops page rank on tools
Users of the Google Webmaster Tools may have noticed that the page rank information has disappeared in the latest release. As Susan Moskwa of Google explains on a support thread:
We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. :-)
Susan refers readers to more information that reveals that there are over 200 different “signals” that can affect how a site is crawled, indexed and ranked. In fact Google started discussing omitting PageRank from the tools in 2007 (who says the Internet moves fast?). PageRank was often over-emphasised by SEO professionals because it was a nice, easy number that could be presented to a client, so this move is a clear indication from Google that it really isn’t the key metric. For more information, have a look at a great post by Derek Powazek about SEO myths (thanks to TWIG for the link).
Organisers claim success for Batteries 2009
The organizers of BATTERIES 2009 have announced that the event was attended by 350 delegates, which is a strong showing from a niche show. Unsurprisingly they also announced the event will continue next year, running from 29th September to 1st October 2010. the organizers have sensibly chosen to keep the same venue in the French Riviera, a location that must help attract attendees!
The proceedings for BATTERIES 2009 are also available and can be requested by contacting rveyrac@lepublicsysteme.fr.
John Walko to retire
Popular veteran editor John Walko is to retire from TechInsights at the end of this month. John has amassed many achievements during his time as a technology journalist, spend 33 years at UBM (owners of TechInsights), 24 ofthem covering the electronics industry.
John started with UBM writing for chemistry and chemical engineering related titles (Manufacturing Chemist, Process Engineering) after which he joined The Engineer, where be began covering electronics. John then moved to the recently launched Electronics Times as News Editor, moving up to Deputy Editor and finally Editor of the title. He has launched Communications Systems Worldwide as well as CommsDesign.com, and also worked on EE Times as part of the CMP US organization. Most recently John has covered communications, writing articles that have been published throughout the global EE Times network, as well as continuing his work on CommsDesign.com.
It sounds like John is unlikely to have a quiet retirement as he tells me that there is a long list of places that he and his wife plan to visit. At Napier we’ve enjoyed working with John over the years and would like to wish him a fun and enjoyable retirement.
Voting opens for e-Legacy awards
EPD has opened the voting for the 2009 e-Legacy awards. You can vote online at http://www.epdonthenet.net/awards_vote.aspx.
These awards are unique in the industry, and the use of a public vote to decide the winner is a great approach. Of course I’d strongly recommend that you vote for Jennic and Esterel, two Napier clients that have been recognised for their contribution to environmental design and security.
EDN Europe runs first animated Flash advert
EDN Europe has run their first animated flash advert in the digital edition of the magazine. The advert is on page 5 of the October 09 issue (NB this link isn't likely to work for ever!). The animation is about as simple as it can get, so it can be regard as a bit of a test.
Even with a little animation, the Ceros platform remains amazingly quick. I didn't find the advert too intrusive, but I didn't find it that compelling either - the equivalent to a flashing neon sign. A quick visit to the Ceros website shows you how much more can be accomplished using the platform, with some great examples, especially from the consumer space.
In the long run it will be interesting to see what happens with electronic advertising formats in our industry. Will people just go for the "brighter flashing neon sign" approach, making the magazine garish and distracting when you read it, or will advertisers show the creativity to generate adverts that produce real interaction? Although I am worried that magazines could end up being filled with adverts that simply distract readers, effectively reducing the value of the editorial, I'm optimistic that publishers are sensible enough to step in and prevent abuses of the format. I'm also looking forward to developing interactive adverts with clients that will themselves provide valuable and useful content such as video, which are beyond the capabilities of print.
SAME 2009 Results
The organisers of SAME have announced the following statistics for this year’s event:
- 898 Visitors
- 25 Exhibitors
- 12 Sponsors
- 33 Speakers
The event also created interest amongst electronics publications, with more than 15 press representatives attending. SAME is always a small, focussed show, so numbers are never huge, but to have got almost 900 attendees at such a event must be regarded as a real success, particularly in today’s tough economic climate.
Napier achieves PRCA CMS accreditation
Today was an exciting day, as we went through our first audit for the Consultancy Management Standard (CMS) - the quality standard for PR agencies. The PR Consultants Association launched the standard in 1998, and it is now internationally recognised. The standard combines elements of ISO9001 and Investors in People with criteria specific to a PR consultancy, making it a demanding test for any agency. Achieving this certification is a reflection of our team's commitment to quality and continuous improvement, and the improvements we've made will benefit our clients both now and in the future.