A recent article in B2B Magazine cites moves by B-to-B media companies Reed Elsevier, United Business Media and Ziff Davis that, collectively, point to the difficulties trade publishers are having in managing the migration from print to online.

Ziff Davis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing a decrease in revenue from print advertising and subscriptions. UBM announced that it had restructured CMP and eliminated the CMP name. And Reed Elsevier put its Reed Business Information unit on the block.

While we are not happy to see reputable trade publishers suffering, the future belongs to those who leverage technology and find, or hold on to, the B-to-B audience. As we discuss in our white paper on this topic, trade magazine publishers once owned the franchise as aggregators of information. They owned their audience, or community of interest. Many publishers are not leveraging the power of the Internet but rather protecting their traditional print business. This creates an opportunity for marketers to own their own audiences or communities. But to do it right, you have to think like a publisher.

It’s one of the new ways to think about B-to-B direct marketing in the 2.0 world. Please take another look and let us know what you think.