Pay close attention to this year's Media Power 50 selections. Considering the rise of niche Web sites targeting business professionals—not to mention the growing migration of b-to-b ad dollars to online venues—our annual list of the most powerful media outlets could be in for some major alterations in coming years.
“I'll be curious to see [if the list] changes next year,” said Sandra Lopez, integrated marketing manager for business at Intel Corp. Lopez said Web sites such as techcrunch.com and Slashdot.org are coming on strong for b-to-b media buyers and starting to give legacy media brands a run for their money.
“There are [online] companies creating platforms for us to engage in conversations with customers that are two-dimensional compared to one-dimensional,” Lopez said. “Traditional brands have to become more relevant.”
Google, in the Top 10 of the Media Power 50 for six years running and No. 2 since 2004, has become the primary advertising venue for many b-to-b marketers, regardless of the sector. The search engine provides advertisers, however limited their budgets, with the ability to reach their audience by buying relatively inexpensive keywords.
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Social networks, which just a few years ago were considered the domain of teenagers, are also becoming a force in business markets.
“The pendulum is swinging slowly, but the momentum is picking up,” said Gary Slack, senior partner at b-to-b agency Slack Barshinger. “It's not a "hockey stick' moment, but when you have a site like LinkedIn registering 250,000 to 300,000 executive profiles a week—and 23 million businesspeople total—smart business marketers should be there.”
Despite the surge in the number of niche Web sites that provide a highly targeted audience and decent returns, traditional media venues remain vital to advertisers.
“It's still a hybrid world,” Slack said. “Marketers have to make a number of bets because you still have people who are reading The Wall Street Journal.” (The Journal has ranked No. 1 in the Media Power 50 every year since the special report's inception in 2000.)
Dave Rowe, VP-media director of b-to-b agency Doremus, said the fundamentals in ad spending remain the same. “The key thing is what it's always been: the relationship a media vehicle has with its audience and how it can align a brand with a publication, Web site or conference.”
Still, Rowe said, media venues have to continue to push their clients' brands beyond traditional media.
That sentiment was echoed by Dan Infanti, VP-director of brand marketing for financial consultancy CIT Group. “The most important thing to me is the ability of a powerful brand—The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist—to create ad opportunities for CIT in events, online, custom packages, TV programs and use of lists.”
Infanti added: “Media partners have to understand our business and find new ways to take on the challenges we have [in reaching customers and prospects]. It may sound lofty, but that's the reality. It wasn't that long ago that we just talked about the numbers and the buy.”
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