It’s not often I write about media packs, but the new EDN Europe media information is worthy of comment. The circulation is up to 19K – it’s great to see the number of readers recovering after what seemed a rather hurried transition to all-digital distribution. The new media pack is also the first I’ve seen in our industry with embedded video. I think that the magazine did a pretty good job on the videos – managing to include useful information that might otherwise have not made the document, whilst avoiding a tone of desperate pleading for adverts!

To be serious for a moment, I have been very impressed with the way that EDN Europe has incorporated video into their digital editions, and I’m also a huge fan of the Ceros platform they use. Not only does it produce a great rich-media document that opens quickly, but I can also download a very workable PDF version of the media pack.

Tags: EDN Europe, Reed

A few days ago Canon Communications LLC acquired four media brands from Reed Business Information-US: Electronic Design News (EDN), Design News, Test & Measurement World, and Packaging Digest. EDN Europe was not included in the acquisition, and will continue to be published from Reed’s Paris office. I understand that the acquisition is not expected to significantly affect the European title, and that EDN Europe’s digital magazine will continue as planned, which is great news for European engineers.

Tags: EDN Europe, Reed

I’m told that the joint venture electronics show organised by Reed and EE Times Group (formerly TechInsights) will soon have a new name (I’m betting it will include “ESC” and “Live”). The two companies have already been working on the show, which thankfully will move from Farnborough to Earls Court, and I was particularly interested in the plans to encourage exhibitors to take seminar rooms to run presentations, tutorials and labs. ESC has always has a good conference, and if vendors can run their own tutorials, hopefully this will not only encourage higher attendance, but also mean that more visitors spend time on the show floor.

Tags: Electronics, Electronics Weekly, ESC, ESE, Reed, Shows and Events, TechInsights, UK

Reed has reduced the circulation of EPN from 60K to 50K. The magazine still retains a large print distribution of 32K, whilst 18K readers receive the digital version. E-mail newsletters circulation has also dropped slightly from 20K to 17K in the latest media pack. That magazine retains its BPA audit, and therefore continues to be the European electronics title with the highest audited circulation. Given the challenges faced by the whole market, and recent cutbacks at Reed, the fall in circulation is not surprising although it would have been nice if more readers could be convinced to take the digital issue, rather than dropping off the circulation.

Tags: EPN, Reed

2009 has been a dreadful year for publishers, and so I’m delighted that I’m going to end the year with a post about the launch of two new titles. ElectronicSpecifier will launch a monthly pan-European digital magazine in January and a French language title in February. There hasn’t been an announcement about a French website, but I’d confidently predict that unless the magazine is a failure, the site will follow fairly early in 2010.

Unsurprisingly both titles are planned to be “product books”, although I understand that the magazines will also include some industry news.

The launch of a pan-European digital title is easy to understand. ElectronicSpecifier has a strong pan-European list that will provide a circulation of more than 45,000 and a partnership with Hearst that could add another 20,000 readers. Their French list is just over 8500, which could increase to over 10,000 with Hearst’s data.  And of course once you have an editor for the website and a good database, the incremental cost of publishing a digital magazine is very low.

After the recent decisions by Reed and Groupe Tests that left the French market with just one magazine, the launch of a French title isn’t surprising. In fact I know of at least one other publisher with pretty advanced plans for a French print title.

The ElectronicSpecifier titles will use NxtBook as their technology platform. Although not quite matching Ceros, who I think is the industry leader in terms of the reader experience, NxtBook should provide a great platform for the magazines. Unsurprisingly multimedia adverts, including video, animation and sound will all be offered from the first issues.

I’m confident that these titles will prove successful. Firstly these titles are fundamentally low-cost, and I would expect advertising rates to be aggressive. The database has also proven itself to be effective, generating good open and response rates, even though the demographics are not as comprehensive as some other titles. And clearly the French title is entering a market desperate for more publications: in fact I’d say that this launch represents ElectronicSpecifier winning a race to announce a new French title.

ElectronicSpecifier has a clear advantage over digital versions of print titles: the magazine can be designed for on-screen reading and to work synergistically with the web. Replicating a print magazine digitally just doesn’t work, even on large high-resolution screens. Better layout will improve open rates: just look at the “designed for digital” Electronic Design Europe, which has outstanding open rates despite using a simple PDF format for distribution. We’ve not yet seen a product book specifically designed for digital, but I hope that ElectronicSpecifier have the confidence to get away from the format of product news in print titles. This format was designed to drive enquiries through the old bingo card system. In digital titles you just don’t need all the detail: if I’m looking for a product in a digital title all I need is a couple of sentences giving me the main facts about the product, and I’ll know immediately if I want to click through to the full story and datasheet.

I don’t, however, think that the recent flurry of digital titles means it’s all over for print – at least not yet. Open rates for digital titles are low, and few advertisers values a digital reader as highly as a print reader.

Over the next few years, however, e-book readers are going to improve dramatically from the pretty shambolic offerings that we have available in Europe. We’ll then have the standards fight – similar to Betamax against VHS. Eventually there will be one great e-book platform that frankly is better than carrying round a big pile of books and magazines. When this happens, the reading experience will be great, magazines will be delivered direct to your e-book reader, and open rates will rocket. It’s even possible that in the future a digital subscriber will be seen as more valuable than a print reader, although this is a long way off.

Tags: Advertising, Digital Magazines, Electronics, electronicspecifier, ESE, Europe, Online, Reed, Video

At last night’s Elektra Awards, Paul Briggs, Group Publisher for Reed Technology Group, announced that Electronics Weekly and UBM are to form a strategic partnership for the Embedded Systems Conference and Exhibition, to be held on October 20-21st 2010 at Earls Court. A couple of months ago this partnership would have been almost unthinkable, but with the sale of EE Times, it seems almost anything is possible.

Of course it is good news that there will be two major companies behind the event next year, and I really hope it works. It does, however, need some radical thinking. Neither company generated large attendances at events this year, and more worryingly they didn’t appear to be able to attract big name exhibitors who must sign up early to encourage smaller exhibitors and visitors to attend.

The move will presumably see National Electronics Week refocus on its core electronics manufacturing sector, which may even increase the quality of the visitors, although they will have to work had to secure strong support from the media.

Overall it’s a good thing that we have commitment to ESC2010, but if it is to be a success the organisers need to think radically. Today exhibition success is not about achieving a particular revenue per square meter of booth space. It’s all about getting big-name companies who will not only attract visitors, but also proactively market the event to their databases, and provide compelling reasons to attend, such as running classes on the show floor. I hope that EW and UBM can see the benefit of this, and are able to announce commitments to exhibit from several major manufacturers.

Tags: Awards, EE Times, Electronics, Electronics Weekly, ESC, National Electronics Week, Reed, Shows and Events

Hot on the heels of the announcement that Reed is getting out of the French language electronics market, the Paris-based publisher has announced that it will launch two new EPN blogs covering industrial automation and automotive electronics. Both topics will be covered by blogs in English and German.

The move into German-language content is interesting, and appears to be somewhat opportunistic as the blogger for both topics will be the excellent Marisa Robles Consee, who can write excellent English and German articles.

It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a more determined foray into the overcrowded German market, or if it turns out to simply be a 1-off to take advantage of great editorial talent. Either way, it’s good to see that EPN continues to recruit bloggers that can match the very high standard of the existing Distribution and RF blogs.

Tags: Blogs, Electronics, EPN, Online, Reed

Reed has decided to close EPE and EPN France, as well as switching EDN Europe to an all-digital circulation. I’ve written separate posts on each of the titles, but the extent of these cutbacks is shocking. It’s now time for new online titles with low-cost business models to launch: all these publications were able to generate a significant advertising revenue that would no doubt could be profitable for a different set-up.

At Napier we’ve seen the IT industry transformed with great online publications that generate great traffic and strong revenue. I hope there are entrepreneurial editors who can make the same thing happen in the European electronics media.

Tags: Advertising, Editors, EDN Europe, Electronics, EPE, EPN, EPN France, ESE, Europe, France, Online, Reed

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.

Tags: EPE, EPN, EPN France, France, Reed, Spain

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.

Tags: Advertising, EDN Europe, Electronics, EPN, EPN France, ESC, Europe, France, Reed, USA, Video

Reed has decided to close EPN France at the end of this year, despite the merger of Electronique and Electronique International from the beginning of 2010. This leaves just one major French publication. The EPN France website will also close at the end of 2009. The news was also announced at the same time Reed said they would distribute EDN Europe only as a digital title from January 2010.

I’m amazed that Reed feel they can’t make money with one of just two French titles. Although the German electronics market is somewhat larger than the French market, the vast disparity between the number of publications in each market makes no sense.

At Napier we saw a similar collapse in the French IT print media, but this resulted in a number of new online publications. The electronics market has yet to see many online titles driven by “real” editorial content (rather than simply taking press release content). It will be interesting to see if online electronics sites are launched to create new vehicles to reach French engineers: I’d certainly back any new launches as it seems any reasonable site would be almost guaranteed to succeed!

Tags: EDN Europe, Electronics, Electronique, EPN, EPN France, Europe, France, Online, Reed

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.

Tags: Digital Magazines and Print Publications, EDN Europe, Online, Reed