Life has kept me busy recently – clients, a taste of spring on the golf course, and a bit of the flu for the past week – so I’m just catching up on a lot of stuff, including blogging.

The topic of print verses online publishing is something that many marketing folks are pondering at the moment when it comes to spending their advertising dollars. For many of my technology clients, print advertising is not a factor. Most have embraced online advertising in some form and if we do a print ad, it is usually for a conference guide or some very targeted publication.

What is happening in the media industry for high technology is just the beginning. A post by Tony Hung, Print Publishing’s Death Knell?, points out some interesting facts about IDG Publishing’s revenue mix between online and print. IDG is a media company focusing on the IT industry. According to Colin Crawford’s post, The transformation of IDG, the absolute dollar growth of IDG’s online revenues now exceeds the decline in their print revenues. This change in their revenue mix and higher margins from the online businesses have resulted in them being more profitable than before. So it is no surprise that InfoWorld (an IDG publication) announced that it would be discontinuing its print publication in order to focus its efforts online. According to another post by Colin, since print is no longer the major product line at InfoWorld, closure of the 27 year print publication is a natural step in a plan that was put into place 2 years ago.

The future of print in the technology industry is transitioning. Other print publications already have disappeared or have been repurposed into online publications. More will follow suit. And truthfully, in an industry where change happens so quickly, I would prefer to get all of my information online.

But is this the case in all industries? If print advertising is part of your marketing strategy, it may be a good time to do an analysis of your industry and target market to determine whether a shift from print to online is happening and how you can distribute your advertising efforts to take advantage of this trend.