Electronic products

Corporate media supplants independent journalism in semiconductor market

Corporate websites in the semiconductor industry provide the information that customers trust and go to, over the sites that identify themselves as “independent journalism.”

As I wrapped up the old year, a trend I’ve been watching since 2000 finally came to a conclusion: Media as we have defined it for the past 50 years is dead in the semiconductor industry.  It has been replaced by Corporations as Media.  0805wileycartoon3


Some may think the beginning of this trend was when Paul Miller, then CEO of UBM Tech, announced to the EDAC member meeting that EE Times was dropping coverage of the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry.  It really began in 2000 when the three large EDA companies — Synopsys, Mentor Graphics and Cadence — began slashing their advertising budgets with the express design to reduce the number of print pages in the robust media industry.  The plan was to limit the amount of “free PR” smaller companies were getting thanks to the advertising dollars from the big three.  This affected all of the electronics industry because, at the time, EDA companies wire pretty much the primary advertiser for all publications (semiconductor companies slashed ad budgets a decade before) 


The fatal blow was when John Blyler left Extension Media in the last quarter of 2014 to do his own thing, a la Ed Sperling and semiengineering.com.


Over the past 10 years, companies have been slowly developing and distributing their own content and, in fact, competing with independent media that remain dependent on sponsorships and advertising from the companies they compete with.  Looking at the worldwide ranking on Alexa shows that EE Times still leads in unique visits compared to the EDA companies, but not by much, even though EE Times actually provides more content on more industries than EDA.


Alexa Worldwide Rankings



  1. EETimes 31,399

  2. Cadence 39,964

  3. Mentor Graphics 51,088

  4. Synopsys 68,913

  5. SemiWiki 313.173

  6. EEJournal 435,641

  7. Semiengineering 648,837

  8. Chip Design 714,638


 


(Note: I also reviewed the rankings of Electronic Design and Electronic Products, but their coverage is broader than semiconductors and EDA and they ranked within spitting distance of EE Times)


Cadence comes in a solid second in the rankings, but note the places of the remaining players.  SemiWiki.com leads that group, but at a far distant 4th place behind the corporate trailer, Synopsys.  But then, lets take a look at the US ranking where most of the world traffic comes from.


Alexa US Rankings



  1. Cadence 7,303

  2. EETimes 14,246

  3. Synopsys 26,404

  4. Mentor Graphics 29,405

  5. SemiWiki 101,181

  6. EEJournal 148,721

  7. Semiengineering 150,574

  8. Chip Design 329,445


Cadence tops EE Times by a clear margin, Synopsys sneaks by Mentor for third and the outliers stay in the same place… far in the back.


We should note that this is the measurement of “unique visits” which are actually meaningless.  It means that either a human being or a spiderbot grabbed a page listing on a search, not that they actually went to the site and looked at anything.  They are slightly more valuable in measuring the most important aspect of content: Engagement.  Looking at those numbers changes everything.


Alexa Page View Rankings



  1. Cadence 5.5

  2. Mentor Graphics 3.4

  3. Synopsys 3.2

  4. SemiWiki 1.9

  5. EETimes 1.9

  6. Semiengineering 1.7

  7. Chip Design 1.6

  8. EEJournal 1.3


Cadence leads the pack with an average of 5.5 pages viewed.  Those are real people looking at content, not just search terms.  Mentor and Synopsys are virtually tied. EE Times and SemiWiki are in a dead heat with 1.9 page views.  This is a crucial differentiator.  When people are looking for something specific, say an article about them, they will look at two pages.  The front page of the site and the link to the article.  These people are typically marketing, sales and C-Level executives.  When they get to a third page, they are more likely a customer.  Still, you could argue that the go to the article page and then to the corporate site via the link.  You might think that until you look at the most crucial measurement: Time spent on the site.


 Alexa Time Rankings



  1. Cadence 7.30

  2. Mentor Graphics 5.59

  3. Synopsys 4.58

  4. Chip Design 2.58

  5. Semiengineering 2.47

  6. SemiWiki 2.38

  7. EETimes 2.23

  8. EEJournal 1.43


 Cadence is a clear winner here.  Of the three corporate sites, they are the only one to employ a former journalist, Brian Fuller, as an editor in chief.  That decision has proven to be extremely valuable to Cadence when it comes to grabbing the attention of their customers.  Cadence even ranks bigger than its own customers, including ARM, TI and TSMC.


 Just to be fair, I also looked at several other ranking sites, including compete.com and quantcast.com. However, outside of the three corporations and EETimes, none of the other sites had enough traffic to generate a ranking.


 So, what does this all mean?  Corporate websites in the semiconductor industry provide the information that customers trust and go to, over the sites that identify themselves as “independent journalism.”  The audience for those latter sites are primarily the people that pay them money to cover their news, not the customers the corporations want to reach. What is truly bizarre is that the data the corporations are gathering about these customers is not being measured or used as well as what the independent publications could do because the corporations are measuring data the same way as the publications publicly state.  The good stuff they keep to themselves as proprietary.


This doesn’t mean that the publications are not doing worthwhile work, but they are not reaching the people they hope and claim to reach and while corporations are reaching the customers, they are not giving them valuable information.  What to do about that problem is another issue for discussion.


 

Mannion goes to Electronic Products

I've known about this for some time, but I was asked to keep mum about it.  Patrick Mannion left EE Times a few weeks ago, as Brian Fuller reported before Thanksgiving.  Today I got permission to say that Patrick has gone back to his roots and become director of content for Hearst Electronics Group which covers Electronic Products, Electronic Engineer's Master and Electronic Products China.


Patrick started his career 20 years ago with Electronic Products.  Fuller is taking over his responsibilities while EE Times looks for a replacement.


That last statement fills me with joy.  This was not a layoff.  This was personnel acquisition.  Haven't heard that from the media for some time.

New Tech Press, Live from DAC!

Big news all around today.  Denali and Cadence merge and New Tech Press will go to DAC this year with live video broadcasts on line.

Yep, today we reached agreement with Vpype, the social video startup for partial sponsorship of live (and later archived) interviews with technologists and industry leaders at the Design Automation Conference in Anaheim, beginning June 14.

Here's the catch: You won't be able to see the live broadcasts unless you have a Facebook account.  You'll have to wait until the archived interviews go up on the Vpype site, New Tech Press, and the NTP network partners, like Electronic Products, as well.  

The offer of sponsorship came after I started a series on the Use of Social Video a couple of weeks ago on Facebook that will be continuing indefinitely and will probably be expanding to multiple weekly events on other subjects.

So this is a heads up on both of those opportunities.  We had about 10 people in the audience for last week's broadcast and the new one will start at 10:05 tomorrow morning and I'm looking to expand that audience.  Come with questions, even if they are not about the subject matter of the day (camera positioning).  And I'm going to be looking for interview subjects and participants and we are still in need of a couple of sponsors to round out the costs.  Spread the word and let me know if you want to participate.

EETimes redesign coming. The center does not hold. Prepare for panic!

OK, I'm being a real jerkwad, but yes, EE Times is going to launch a redesign this coming weekend and I predict no small amount of bitching and moaning from it's audience.  Nothing is going to be where you expect it and it is going to be proclaimed, "not as good as it used to be."



Why do I predict that?  Because with every change in media, that's what the general consensus is.  Of course, it is preceded by a general consensus that it was originally not worth the powder to blow it to hell, but change one little bit of it and listen to the screams.  Kinda like Congress, actually.



But here's a clue number one for everyone: Nothing is as it was.



Clue number two: It will never be as it was again.



Clue number three: What was wasn't working then and it's not going to work now.



So we should all get ready for new stuff and start playing around with it.



Of course, I'm in a better position than many readers of EE Times because I've known the change was coming.  I've been talking with the EE Times management for more than two years as we mutually try to figure out what the hell happened and what we need to do about it.  I've also talked with the management of a lot of other B2B publishing houses and very few of them have their heads out of ... the sand.  Yet.



It has not been easy for the media over the past decade.  Most of the world is trying to cope with a 2-year recession and the media has been dealing with it since 1999.  There have been a lot of changes and there will be more to come.  But what I see in the new EE Times Group (which brings all the disparate titles of the organization under one banner) is a herculean effort to adapt and remain flexible.



Is it going to work? Who knows?  What we do know is that nothing has worked so far.  Reed Business has sold of EDN, SCDSource went under this week, Penton is slogging through bankruptcy (but emerged March 5-- which I missed so thanks for the heads up DM), Pennwell is down the well... and United Business Media?  Well they lost money last year, but the losses almost equal their acquisitions.  So rather than shed businesses they are acquiring them.  They've downsized redundant personnel but are currently looking to hiring editorial staff.  They are not exactly burning down the house, but they are holding their own when competitors are collapsing.  About they only competitor keeping pace that I've seen is Hearst's Electronic Products that recently completely redid their own site.



So when the new EE Times comes out, scream if you want, but look into it.  Try to figure out how to use it.  And if you can't give me a call.  My rates are reasonable.



Exercises in Futility



Ozzie, my bizdev homeboy, has been busting my chops for a
few weeks over making some comment on our experience at the Design Automation
Conference (DAC), so I'm giving in and talking about it.



For the past year I've been talking about some new models
for journalism that include the adoption of video/audio podcasts, social media,
a variation on pay-for-play coverage (that we call objective advocacy™) and
cooperative reporting.



We've been working on developing video interviews and have
one currently running on YouTube, not to mention the interviews I've done on
this blog for the past year.
  We've
had some enormous initial success with text articles as well … all outside of
the electronic design automation (EDA) world.
  We went to DAC reluctantly with a lot of pressure from
several marketers and PR folks to create video podcasts of four or five
companies.



I say reluctantly because we all know that EDA marketers
don't believe in supporting the information infrastructure that promotes their
business and they have little inventiveness when it comes to marketing
concepts.
  They believe that their
technology is just "so amazing" that the media ought to support their
efforts for free.
  I think trying
to help that industry is an enormous waste of time and effort.
  Not to mention money.  But I gave in to my crew and friends
and we set up our meetings and got down to DAC on Sunday evening.
  We arranged to have all our tapings on
Monday and then head back to edit and post.



I've always said, if you think you're a leader, turn
around.
  If no one is there, you're
just taking a walk. So on Monday I turned around and found a whole bunch of
people in my wake.
  EE Times (one
of my media partners) was doing videos of the big company CEOs with crappy
little handheld cameras … at no cost to the companies.
  IB Systems (another media partner) set
up an on floor booth with great cameras and good production value… to do up to
a 3-minute interview that was little more than restating the first sentence in
a news release. Dave Maliniak of Electronic Design was doing really good
interviews with really good cameras and really good production values… that you
can only find with some effort on the ED site because none of them have URLs
attached to them.
  And finally
SCDSource was doing video interviews with Richard Goering at a bargain $500 a
pop … and I still haven't been able to find where they are.



What all do these new efforts have in common?  They are "free" and they are
hard to find.
 



I put free in quotes because the fact is someone is
subsidizing these efforts.
  The IB
Systems videos are part of what you pay for in membership. SCDSource's price
did not cover the expense of producing the videos (they barely pay for Richard's
time).
  Electronic Design sold
advertising and got additional subsidies from other sources.
  That's what everyone has to learn about
the media … someone has to pay for it and finding people and organizations
willing to do that, in certain arenas, is getting hard to find.
  Once the funding dries up, so does the
media.
  Right now, the electronics B2B
media is experimenting with video … and not doing it all that well … hoping
that someone will start to support it.
 
If that doesn't happen soon, that opportunity will go away.



But here's the thing, media folks, if you keep giving it
away, no one is going to be willing to support it.



Video is not an easy medium to work in.  It is highly restrictive in the ability
of the web to handle it, storage, time, and the fact that every little visual
and audio error is there forever in the minds of the viewer.
  It takes more time and effort to
produce a 5-minute video than it does to create a 2500 article.
  But the benefits if done well are
amazingly profitable for a marketing effort.



The second issue is accessibility.  You can have a great production, great content and a high
bandwidth server to handle to gigabyte files,
but if no one can find it on the
web
, what good is it?  (BTW, that link is to show you how easy it is to make it accessible ) So far, the
efforts of the organizations mentioned here are mostly ego gratification of the companies' CEOs, not
the transfer of information or presentation of messages to the audience..



New Tech Press has been working out these bugs for a year
and has almost got it right , so if you are going to follow our example at
least learn from our experience.



First, use the power of the internet and get that content
out there.  Go see what Chip
Design, EE Times, Techonline and Electronic Products are doing as they put
audio and video material in easy reach, easily searchable; a click or two away
from the home page.  Second, remember you get what you pay for.  If you pay nothing, expect crap.  If you pay a little more than nothing,
expect little more than crap. And if
you don't want to follow these two simple rules, don't bitch if the media
disappears.

Blogging Birds of a Feather and a plucked chicken

I was not able to schedule my DAC time to attend the Birds of a Feather meeting of EDA bloggers, nor could I make the marketing panel on the use of new media.  I'm looking to JL Gray at CoolVerification to give me the lowdown on that, but he's already helped.  His post earlier this week on the event kinda told me what to expect.  First Rich Goldman of Synopsys, a fine fellow actually, is one of the panelists.  Synopsys recently fired its blogging guru, Ron Ploof as being unnecessary.  There is also Limor Fix from Intel, and the DAC chair, Monika Maeckle, VP of new Media at Business Wire and Rhonda McGee, director of research, at Reed Business.  Not a blogger in the bunch.  I can see Monika as having something to say because BW has a lot of interesting tools to measure new media ... though they are not cheap.  But I'm not sure what value the rest have.  I was thinking most of the panel belongs in the audience.  What is missing are the guys in the trenches, like JL, Harry the ASIC Guy and even Ron Ploof.

Hearst joins the revolution



On my long list of things to do has been to call Bill Barron, vice
president and publishing director at Hearst Business Communications and have a
chat about New Tech Press.
  Bill,
ever the go-getter, beat me to the punch last week right after the
Microemissive Displays story broke on New Tech Press and the media network.  He wanted to arrange a meeting with his
team about how Hearst could work with us.



So Wednesday, my "homeboy" of business development and I
were on the phone with Bill,
Electronic Products Editorial Director Murray
Slovick, and EP's Managing Editor Bryan DeLuca.
  It wasn't a long call because these guys get what New Tech
Press is doing.
 The bottom line:
Electronic Products and it's sister publications at Hearst are now a part of
the New Tech Press media network.





Electronic Products and the Hearst organization is one of the few bright
spots in BtoB media right now. They understand which way the wind is blowing and
they are setting their sails accordingly. Their business is growing, not only
here but in the Asian market with the
 IDG partnership. Unlike almost everyone else, they have
been investing in building content and editors, but that editorial staff is
still stretched and they have been looking for ways to cost effectively expand
their capabilities.

"It's really pretty obvious that New Tech Press is a good
idea and and excellent source of content.
 
We'll take as much as we can get," Murray said during the
conversation.



And we're going to give them as much as possible, specifically
video.
  EP has put a standing video
section on the home page and wants to populate it with real information, not
canned marketing crap.
  Bill and I
had a brief discussion about the EP news section that is populated primarily by
rehashed news releases and the possibility of replacing it all with New Tech
Press content.
  All we have to do
is get it.



So it's up to you guys out there in the electronics world.  You gonna get with the program?






In June, the Design Automation Conference is going on in Anaheim. There
are going to be the remaining editors covering the DAC program, but they won't
have much time for meetings. I know Murray and his crew want to meet with
everyone they can, but there will only be a handful of them at the show so
don't get your hopes up. There will, however, be New Tech Press editors walking
the floor and offering a chance to get into our new video program among other
opportunities.
  It's becoming the
only game in town for the EDA industry now and it's going to become a pretty
exclusive club fairly soon.