Earnings: B2B Publisher Centaur Media Digital Revenue Drops 11 Percent
It’s often said as the paid content debate rages on that B2B publishers find it easier to make money online than their consumer media cousins. Tell that to Centaur Media, which saw its online product revenue drop 11.9 percent to £15.5 million for the year to 30 June, while online EBITDA fell 12.2 percent to £3.6 million. Online subscription revenue fell by £100,000 to £6.9 million. Release.
Overall, that contributed to a 88 percent pretax profit drop for the year, with revenue down 27 percent to £66.3 million. The figures are not helped by a 34 percent year-on-year reduction in advertising revenue or a £1.7 million restructuring charge as the business has shut titles, laid off more than 100 staff, and integrated print and online operations.
– Print profit meltdown: At least online is holding up better than struggling print: the profits of Centaur’s print titles have almost been wiped out entirely. Its magazines made £10.7 million in EBDITA in 2007-8 but that has plummeted to just £600,000 in the year to July, a 94.4 percent reduction.
– Cost savings: Centaur saved £9.6 million in the year to July and promises to save another £12 million in “fixed cost base” savings in the next three to five years, which sounds like more redundancies and/or title closures. In the last year the company shed 139 staff, representing 18 percent of employees.
– What recovery?: Others may not have seen the evidence that publishing will return to anything like the profit levels it previously enjoyed, but that doesn’t stop Centaur chairman Graham Sherren declaring that “whilst progress may initially be slow I expect revenues to return to their previous levels as we begin to take full advantage of this recovery.”
Quote: "Itâs often said as the paid content debate rages on that B2B publishers find it easier to make money online than their consumer media cousins. "
Yes. This is true. As corporates tend to have things like budgets for useful information and are generally sensitive to compliance related issues, like being sued for breach of copyright. Unlike consumers.
However there is one caveat that should be added. Insert the word "good" before "B2B publishers" and this makes the statement more accurate. The word "good" cannot apply to Centaur who are B2B in the loosest possible sense. This entity is an advertising play; the content is just space filler between ads. Fluff, basically. In a Sterling stylee. Their content is just not worth paying for and, with the ad meltdown, it is hardly surprising that this tenth-rater is loosing money. Wouldn't touch 'em with a bargepole. The recession will most likely eliminate those B2B publishers who don't actually publish anything worth reading, let alone paying for. Corporates are continuing to pay for original compelling content. They will not pay for the recycled press releases that fill the pages not occupied by the ever decreasing number of ads as seen in the vacuous glossy magazine output of publishers such as this.
FF