Trade Mag Admits 84% Prefer Online Over Print

Some say the industry is so old and conservative that print is still important.

Well, even a print trade magazine is now admitting this is no longer true.

Online Dominates Print

Security Systems News declares, "SSN readers look online for news", noting that only "Sixteen percent said that they prefer to read their news in print."

Trade Mags Online Traffic Bad

What is strange about this is, checking SSN's own media kit, their online traffic is poor:

By contrast, IPVM has 500%+ their monthly page views, averaging more page views a week than SSN in a month (75,000 - 100,000 for IPVM weekly vs 62,174 for SSN monthly). Plus, SSN is free and 90%+ of IPVM is member's only.

And SSN is not alone. Security trade magazine online readership is generally similarly poor. For example, Security Sales claims ~90k page impressions per month and SDM only claims ~55k page views per month.

Lack of Publishing

The main reason we see for poor trade mag traffic is a lack of publishing. They do not publish much original content. Copying or re-writing press releases does not excite many to read. Being incapable of criticizing industry players makes their reporting dull and uninteresting.

Of course, the economic challenge is advertising. There are just too few people in the industry overall and too few advertisers willing to pay a premium to support more publishing when readership levels are so low. And print has been their last bastion, an area where advertisers would pay price levels that are essentially crazy compared to modern web advertising prices (e.g., LinkedIn's Emergence as a Video Surveillance Marketing Power).

Bad Sign for Industry

Alas, we think this situation is neither good for the the industry nor IPVM. It reflects a widespread apathy among many / most industry people who rarely read or learn about anything professionally.