Colin Crawford

Senior Vice President, Online, International Data Group

Magazines 24/7 Chairman

Opening Remarks

Magazines 24/7 Connecting with the Consumer

February 27, 2007

New York, NY

Thank you Nina.

Well, good morning and welcome to an agenda-rich day.

I'd like to thank the MPA for asking me to be the chair of such a prestigious event.

The size of todays audience shows either an amazing willingness to learn about this new world or perhaps sheer fear of being left behind!

Id like to give a very special thank you to our generous sponsors

Mochila who create marketplaces for digital content

MRI who provides multimedia audience research and

Clickability who delivers on demand content management systems

I started in print publishing back in 1987, running Dennis Publishing in the UK, working closely with a colleague and friend from whom youll be hearing later Steve Colvin.  For the last 14 years Ive been at International Data Group IDG a company with a 40-year history covering the Information Technology market in print!

A couple of weeks ago I published a blog post about the transformation thats going on at our company.  The response was quite remarkable.

Within hours of the posting, it was picked up by paidcontent leading to blog commentary at Jeff Jarvis' Buzz Machine. It then quickly spread to thousands of mentions around the world. Now only did this demonstrate just how fast content can spread but also it showed the intensity of the debate going on in our industry.

I noted that in the US, our online revenue now accounts for over 35% of our total US publishing revenues. That the growth in our online revenues outpaces the decline in our print revenues and next year, for many of our brands, online revenues will be greater than print revenues. In fact they already are at Computerworld, (one of our key brands). By 2009 approximately 50% of IDGs US revenues will come from online.

Print is still an important part of our business but it is no longer our core focus. Now, IDG Communications defines itself as a web centric information company complemented by expos, events and print publications. 

OK, we're in the technology media. Our readers are farther along the digital adoption curve. Also, we sell advertising primarily to technology marketers, among the most aggressive and experimental in web advertising and marketing.

So, just because we are where we are, doesn't mean that the rest of the publishing world should be in the same place at the same time.

But the technology market offers insights into the rapid changes going on in our publishing industry.

All of us are facing massive change. Were dealing with brutal realities - the costly process of dismantling and replacing legacy operations, cultures and business models with new structures that are not yet fully proven.

However, we know we face greater, potentially fatal risks, if we dont transform our organizations and take some chances.

The most enlightened in our media world will figure how to allow their audiences freedom to create and share their knowledge, and to mash-up content in a way that engages users while developing the business models that support this change.

Were in an exciting growth industry the digital information media business.