Top on-line purchasing resources point the way to the future of purchasing media

Top on-line purchasing resources point the way to the future of purchasing media

Charles Dominick – nextlevelpurchasing.com – recently published his top twenty online resources for procurement pros. It’s an interesting list, ordered by Alexa ranking (notoriously unreliable but as a relative rank guide, there or there abouts).

There’s the obvious resources that you’d expect to be well ranked such as Supply Chain Management Review and Supply Management and there’s no surprise to see Spend Matters and Peter Smith’s  Spend Matters UK up there with Procurement Leaders. But what I found particularly interesting is the specialist niche resources that are exerting an influence.

Metal Miner – a highly niche resource dedicated to the metal market and from the same camp as Spend Matters, has a very impressive 8th ranking. Purchasing Insight of course, focusing on P2P issues like e-invoicing and financial supply chain management – very specialist areas – but again, coming in at a respectable 14th position. And what about atrisk.net a supplier risk management blog at number 16?

What does this say about the future of purchasing media?

Purchasing InsightThere are two trends that are becoming established. The first, well known and understood – the strong generalist on-line sites are taking the place of their paper predecessors. The demise of Purchasing magazine a year ago is is a clear illustration. This has been widely predicted for many years and the growth and increasing ubiquity of devices like the iPad that allow on-line consumption away from the office desk are accelerating this trend.

The second trend – I think more interesting and less obvious – is the inordinate influence that the specialist, niche information providers are beginning to exert. There is no longer any need to subscribe to a small number of generalist journals that will cover 80% of your needs. It’s as easy to subscribe to many specialist information resources and the readership of these very focused sites is growing rapidly. And this is making marketers raise an eyebrow. Why pay premium rates to reach a large audience when you can pay relatively little to access a highly qualified niche audience?

Over the coming months we’ll see these trend become clearer and it will be interesting to see what Charles’ league table looks like in 6 month’s time.




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