It’s always nice to be able to talk about something positive, rather than focus on the negative, and the good news is this will have an effect on you, our valued readers. Turns out that, according to a recent article in The Economist, social media advertising has taken a hit, as various platforms turn to a subscription-based model to, not to just make money, but to achieve some sort of credibility.

But like many business-to-business (B2B) magazines out there, this publication is already an established title with an enviable 26-year track record. That’s not to say however, that we take anything for granted.

The article states: “Since 2021 mobile advertising has been hampered by anti-tracking rules pioneered by Apple, which make it harder for apps like Facebook to target ads and measure their effectiveness. The results have been painful. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has reported falling revenue in each of the past three quarters. Snap, which owns Snapchat, has lost nearly 90 per cent of its market value in the same period.”

In December, Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, relaunched a US$8.99 per month Twitter Blue service, with the most significant benefit for subscribers being that their posts have a ‘more prominent’ place in the feeds of the likes of you and me. Facebook and Instagram users now have the option of paying a monthly fee of US$11.99 for a ‘verified’ account, which gives them a blue badge and promises ‘more widely distributed posts’. Meta is targeting ‘creators’ who use its platforms for work and are assumed to be the most willing to pay for verification.

It all feels a little bit like rearranging the deckchairs on a vessel that, while not necessarily sinking, is certainly circling with other vessels in a diminishing body of water. A somewhat convoluted analogy, but you get my drift. Social media’s not going away, but perhaps its focus is no longer clear.

Many B2B titles have been highly successful for decades, and as one director of a leading PR & Marketing agency said to me at the PGA Show in Orlando recently, “B2B magazines are still of importance, and have an important role to play.”

Another well-respected company in the sector, decided a couple of years ago – on the advice of a third-party marketing expert – to shift the focus away from B2B magazines, and more towards social media. The managing director has since admitted that the move was a mistake, and that the advice has had a detrimental effect on their business.

The bond between B2B titles and its advertisers, or ‘partners’ as I prefer to call them was, traditionally, a very strong one – though the shift of offline advertising budgets to online media has seen that loyalty strained. But we’re still there and still talking to each other in our individual sectors.

While online advertising is still trying to stand on its own two feet, B2B publishing remains a valid and proven method of marketing. What’s more, for the advertiser’s target readership, B2B titles offer higher journalistic standards and a complete lack of ‘click bait’. So, it’s just as important as ever for brands to support their sector’s trade publications.

If B2B media dries up, marketing budgets will be eaten up in a gladiatorial arena where myriad combatants claim to have far bigger weapons than their rivals, but with very little proof and even less substance. Just because a sector is traditional and has a history, doesn’t make it redundant in a cloud-based world.