American Business Media

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June, 2000

Business ad pages stay flat. The business press's financial health follows the up-and-down economic health of its markets. But, overall, publishers attending the American Business Press spring meeting say business has been static for the first half of the year, with slightly better expectations for the second half.

The decade ended just as it started: flat as the Midwest Plains. Sales figures for b-to-b publishers peaked in the mid-nineties before they started to come back down to earth in 1998. By 1999, the numbers were in trouble again, but began to recover slightly toward the end of the year. Gordon Hughes, president of the American Business Media (formerly American Business Press), has predicted that in 2000, b-to-b companies will finally start to get their fair share of Internet ad dollars. They had better not count on them, though, considering the market troubles earlier this year among many of the dot.coms.