Reed Elsevier Braces for Stagnation in Business Publishing Ads
The Wall Street Journal [PREMIUM] reports that though Reed Elsevier will fare pretty well overall in 2004, thanks to continiung strength of its LexisNexis property and healthy sales in its science division, its overall performance is expected to dip to single-digit growth, in part because of expected softness in education-related sales but also because of softness in advertising sales in its business-related magazine properties. Some of this softness is no doubt related to the continuing stall of the global business cycle, but it is also pointing towards the ultimate consequences of business content going electronic at an ever-increasing rate. As businesses worldwide eliminate physical content collections wherever possible, the online versions of these publications found in aggregators' databases are increasingly the only version that professionals will see. Being able to provide ads to this audience behind corporate firewalls will become an increasingly important factor for the success of both global publishers like Reed and independent publishers trying to build market share. Opportunities abound for smart aggregators who are ready to use contextual content to leverage the value of that context intelligently for professionals through ads and other for-fee content placement.