Penton Acquires EyeTraffic — and an Online Business Model?

B2B publisher Penton announced today it purchased DC based online marketing firm EyeTraffic.  Due to the seismic changes that have buffeted b2b publishing in the past few years, this acquisition made a lot of sense to me.

Trade magazines have been decimated by the rise of the Internet. As eyeballs moved online, the b2b publishing business model did not. This led to massive advertising declines and editorial layoffs. And it happened so fast, relatively speaking. Just dial back a few years and think how important (and thick with ads) magazines like Industry Standard, Business 2.0, Information Week and eWeek were to getting your technology message out.

This point was made brutally clear when TMCnet pitched me in early 2010. Their clear message was trade mags are dead, and TMCnet was scooping up all the advertisers with a different model. They hire all the out of work writers to write sponsored editorial, mix it with aggregated content, sprinkle with SEO magic and promise a certain number of online leads per month.

Putting aside questions of editorial and lead quality, the pitch made sense. Here’s my post from last February for more detail.

So now it seems Penton is fighting back. I respect the fact that Sharon Rowlands, CEO of Penton, spelled it out in plain language in the press release:

“Our senior team has felt for some time that a marketing services offering – including online lead generation for our clients – was a critical component of our growth agenda,” said Ms. Rowlands.  “EyeTraffic forms the cornerstone of such an offering.”

Strategic direction is vital, but execution will also be key. How do you maintain editorial excellence with this model? I’ve had fascinating conversations with veteran trade reporters I’ve known for years who have shared their frustrations on how things are now based on pageviews. They say editorial decisions are made based on number of  clicks stories receive, and thorough and balanced reporting is suffering as a result. How much worse might it get with this new guaranteed leads model?

But that’s a post for a different day. In the meantime, good for Penton and good for EyeTraffic, a local DC firm. George Assimakopoulos, head of EyeTraffic and soon to be head of digital sales for Penton is a graduate of Raul Hernandez’s Proxicom. Of course with both companies private, there was no disclosure of a sales price.

It might seem strange that I wish this a successful marriage. After all, Strategic Communications Group has built a track record of success counseling b2b and b2g clients they can do this themselves — publish vertical specific content that attracts a high value audience, and then appropriately monetize that audience to support their business objectives. We’ve done this for clients like Microsoft, BT, Cisco, Monster, EMC and Neustar.

But life is not a zero sum game, and there is plenty of room for multiple successful channels in a marketing plan. For example, I never would counsel a client to stop advertising, or email campaigns or conferences or whatever other channel has proven successful for them. You always need a multi-prong approach.

The Penton publication I’m most familiar with is Telephony. Or should I say was, since it’s now known as Connected Planet (and for some reason is nowhere to be found off the Penton web site). Writers like Carol Wilson, Rich Karpinski and (more recently) Dan O’Shea are experts in their vertical of telecom infrastructure and produce some of the best reporting on the subject. I’ve enjoyed and learned a lot from their reporting for many years.

Penton went through a so called “pre-packaged” Chapter 11 bankruptcy 13 months ago, allowing it to shed debt and secure additional working capital. They need to get this right. The entire online publishing ecosystem — publishers, aggregators, readers, advertisers and even PR firms — will be better off if a successful online b2b publishing business model can be proven and solidified.