November 6, 2003Last week Advanstar (publisher of Cadalyst and Geospatial Solutions) bought Cadence Magazine and related properties from CMP Media. Cadalyst and Cadence have been slugging it out for some years, both slowly moving from an AutoCAD focus to a broader CAD focus. Most recently, CMP decided to cut print subscriptions and offer electronic versions to "non-managers." Several people I spoke with simply stopped receiving the magazine and didn't bother to track down the electronic one, so that strategy may have backfired. Sara Ferris will head up the editorial staff of the new Cadalyst, which will put out its first issue in December. Advanstar publisher Dana Fisher, in an interview at TenLinks.com, noted that "the merged circulation will not be increased since that would mean an increase in advertising rates." That, she offered, is what the market prefers.
Many of you know that I started my GIS career making maps with AutoCAD, so I spent a great deal of time with those two publications early in my career. In fact, I wrote my very first published article for Cadence in 1996. It was about raster to vector conversion, something I knew nothing about! I continue to keep an eye on the CAD marketplace, not only because it intersects with GIS (most recently epitomized by the Bentley/ESRI relationship and Haestad Methods new CADConnect product) but also because I consider it to be a few years ahead of GIS in its adoption and diffusion. I think in some cases what happens in CAD can foreshadow what may be ahead for GIS.
CAD, from my perspective, hit the top of the adoption curve perhaps around 1996/1997. In those days CAD users read the magazines for tips and trips, and user group meetings drew nearly 100 people per month, at least here in Boston. Hardcore users spent eight hours per day in front of CAD (my then boss called it an "operating system") and the brave learned LISP and wrote utilities for their peers. Of late, I've had the feeling that there were few "new users" to be had. Most, though certainly not all, architects, engineers, and construction folks (AEC) now have some CAD tools, be they very high end mechanical design tools, PC-based desktop CAD (AutoCAD or MicroStation) or any of the many low cost solutions (DataCAD, TurboCAD). The market today is close to saturated. In other words, it's now very expensive for vendors to get new users and typical marketing tactics involved in switching users from one product to another.
That maturity has played out in publishing, too. And while this acquisition seems like a huge data point on the timeline, consolidation has been happening quietly in other corners of CAD publishing in recent years. As Rachael Dalton-Taggart notes at CADWire.net, other CAD publications have "submerged" or moved to digital. She does inventory and notes that there are now just two BPA-audited qualified print publications for CAD: Cadalyst and Desktop Engineering. (BPA auditing is method for confirming how many subscribers there are, how long ago they subscribed, and how they subscribed. It's typically used as a tool for advertisers to measure the circulation quality and market reception of a publication. There is auditing for online publications, too.)
Before looking into the crystal ball regarding GIS, consider that the CAD space is at this point much bigger than the GIS space in terms of seats (Autodesk, for example, claims 2 million AutoCAD seats vs. ESRI's claim on its website that on any given day more than one million people use its software [I think that might include users on the Web, though I can't be sure.]) It's also important to note that some fraction of CAD seats are very expensive (particularly those for mechanical design). Consider that in a recent survey AUGI (Autodesk User Group International) asked: "What are your main sources of information about new Autodesk-compatible (add-on) products? Indicate all that apply." The results included these two responses:
- "Articles or advertisements in print magazines - 51%"
- "Articles or advertisements in e-zines - 30%"
The top response: "Autodesk" (61%), the bottom one "my supervisor" (7%).
Those figures would suggest there's perhaps room for two CAD publications, in terms of advertising revenue, especially two that cover a variety of products (not just AutoCAD). On the other hand, consider that Cadalyst and Cadence, at least to me, seemed to be basically identical in recent years - covering the same topics, in the same way.
What does that say about the geospatial publishing space? Are there likely to be changes in the print and online publications as the industry matures? Certainly. Note that many, many GIS print publications have already folded (generally specialty ones addressing particular industries or specific geographies). As in the CAD market, we now have a host of e-mail publications and GIS news websites. Is there overlap? Are some redundant? The market will let publishers know, just as it did in the CAD world.
