Why are technical magazines still alive? Do you still advertise there?

Somehow, technical magazines are still alive, selling paper ads for thousands of dollars per placement. They claim modest distribution to begin with, and then bump that up a little to account for how many readers see each copy of the publication. But no matter how you slice it, the cost per impression is huge.

Let’s say a trade publication has a circulation of 10,000 copies each month. They claim each copy is read by 2.5 different people for a total “circulation” of 25,000. Let’s also say your half-page ad costs $5,000. That’s a cost of $.20 to reach each person, or a CPM of $200. And that’s just for a possible impression. If your ad is stuck near a boring story, it may only get seen by half of those people, driving your CPM to $400.

And once somebody sees your ad, how can they take action? Do they have to go to your web site? Are people still filling out bingo cards?

.
It’s no wonder advertising budgets are moving online. eMarketer reports that US online ad spending grew to 25.8B in 2010, and that it will grow by 60% to $40.5B in 2014.

I’m not saying that advertising with technical trade magazines is a bad idea. They are in business because they feature strong technical reporting on topics that matter to a highly targeted audience. My point is that you don’t have to kill trees to reach their audience.