There's no business like the show business for U.S. trade books

For the first time, American Business Media, representing many of the U.S. trade magazines, has found that non-print activities have eclipsed print advertising sales.

According to a story in MediaPost's Research Brief, the face-to-face events industry (trade shows and events) is a rapidly growing, critical part of business media.

Trade shows accounted for 36% ($11.3 billion) of revenue in 2006 while magazines brought in 35% says ABM President and CEO Gordon T. Hughes. This is surpassed only by digital and custom media.

"As business media companies continue to move into a multiplatform environment, the industry is experiencing growth in three out of four of its major segments: trade shows, custom media and e-Media," he said.

"E-Media has grown... 22% in revenue over 2005, followed by custom media's 18% growth spurt and trade shows... at a 10% growth variance over 2005. Although ad pages and revenue for January 2007 showed a decline of 3.1% and 2.78% respectively, as predicted, the business media industry now represents $31.1 billion in revenues across all four platforms..."