Passé print
Reed Business Information is selling two of its best known tech titles - Computer Weekly and MicroScope - to US specialist tech trade publisher TechTarget, which plans to discontinue the print versions of the mags as soon as the deal is concluded next month.
This news coincides with the latest study into the UK online advertising market, which revealed a quarter of all the money spent on advertising in the UK now goes online. Print circulations and ad revenues have been in decline for some time, and it's becoming increasingly hard to make the print business profitable.
TechTarget's strategy seems to be to accumulate a stable of tech trade titles, and thus offer an advertising, events and lead-generation one-stop-shop for companies trying to influence IT managers and other enterprise IT decision-makers. Its biggest global competitor is probably UBM, although Incisive's Computing and CRN will be among the biggest competitors in the UK.
"ComputerWeekly.com and MicroScope.co.uk strengthens TechTarget's already high quality audience and substantial reach into senior IT decision makers in the UK," said Bill Crowley, international SVP at TechTarget. "TechTarget brings significant new opportunities to these properties with our history of developing audiences, lead generation expertise and our operational ability to execute multi-country guaranteed programs."
We have to assume this move won't be great news for the staff at Computer Weekly and MicroScope, although TechTarget has given no indication one way or the other about potential redundancies. It already runs a bunch of other enterprise technology sites in the UK, such as the catchily-named SearchVirtualDataCentre.co.uk.
