Reportlinker's blog : Web 3.0, Vertical Search, Information Industry and Market Research News - Tag - industry reports

Who produces and publishes open access content ?

Nicolas — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:03:00 +0200

As explained last week, we are uploading for our readers chapter extracted from an conference of the 2007 Online Show in December. We will present you what are the so called “open access market research reports” and who is publishing them.

Nowadays, large Anglo Saxon and American groups such as Dun and Bradstreet, Factiva or Thomson Corp dominate the business information market. These players were born during the first wave of industry information providers. Launched in the early 80’s, they focus on financial and economic information aggregation. Their database, accessible by subscription, mainly targets Fortune 1000 and multinational corporations.

Beside these giants around which the information industry gets structured, the market is completely atomised. His peculiarity is the large number of private publishers. This is especially true on the market research segment. Most famous ones are Datamonitor or Euromonitor. These last distribute reports sold from € 1500 to 3000. Outsell estimates companies will spend more than € 12 Billion in 2010 in market research reports purchasing. This market grows by 11% a year in average.

These publishers’ global offer is estimated to 150 000 documents. Specialized in distance selling, they make a great usage of opportunities offered by Internet Search Engine for their document promotion. They also distribute their content trough market research aggregator, such as Reportlinker.com in Europe or Marketresearch.com in the USA. This last, worldwide leader, references approximately 100 000 documents.

But the Internet is full of treasures. Apart form these reports, many free market research reports are published on the Internet, by public organisations such as Embassies, Ministries or Trade Unions. We estimate than 10 million of these free reports are available online today.

Definition : What do we call Open Access Content dedicated to business research ?

Wikipedia defines the “Open access (OA) as immediate, free and unrestricted online access to digital (…) material, primarily peer-reviewed research articles in journals.”

OA content business research can be described as:

Information published for free on the Internet
Information giving insight into markets or industries, countries or companies
Information that has been structured and documented : source, date, author….

We can divide the Open Access Business Information into two categories :

1/Public Domain Information

The public domain information are the so called “Public Sector Information” (PSI).
Definition of “public sector body” given in the Mepsir report (June 2006) : The definition of “public sector body” is taken from Directive 92/50/EEC as “State, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law, associations formed by one or more of such authorities or bodies governed by public law” where “Body governed by public law” means “Any body that is established for the specific purpose of meeting needs in the general interest, not having an industrial or commercial character, and having legal personality and financed, for the most part, by the State, or regional or local authorities, or other bodies governed by public law; or subject to management supervision by those bodies; or having an administrative, managerial or supervisory board, more than half of whose members are appointed by the State, regional or local authorities or by other bodies governed by public law”.

2/Private Papers

The private paper can also be defined as …..all the other documents !!
Business information published by private companies to promote their services companies or know-how (Analyst research reports, Annual Reports…)

Which kind of open access content can you find on the Internet ?

Ubiquick estimates that more than 10 Million free industry reports are available on the Internet. Obviously, and for commercial reasons, most of them are published by organisation financed by States. But publishing information on a sector can also be a promotional tool for many private companies.

Type and Source for Open Access Industry Information

1/ Type

Annual Reports
Press Releases (?)
White Papers
Investment reports
Country reports
Economic indicators
Trade Statistics
Patent and trademarks information

2/ Source

Embassy
National Institute
Competition Commission
Ministry
Local representation of state / federation
Trade Union
Customs
National and Central Bank
International Institutions
Stock exchange
Consulting firm
Banks
Chamber of Commerce

Summary : Type of public domain information by sources

10 years of market research aggregation : history

Nicolas — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 19:13:00 +0200

Private market reports publishers sales forces have a lot of choice in their e-business strategy: Banners, press articles, interview... they are using classical marketing tools to generate traffic and sales over the Internet.

But for few years, they also sign distribution agreements with a new kinds of distributors : market research aggregators. What’s a market research aggregator ? What are the characteristics of that market ? What’s its history ? today’s situation ? future ? Who are the leaders ?

We are in this business for 6 years. And have seen so many new incomers ! We propose you to discover this market today through different papers and interviews we will post in the coming weeks.

What's a market research aggregator ?

The aggregator is an intermediary between off the shelves market research publishers, such as Datamonitor, and clients. They are the most famous indirect e-channel sales for market research publishers..

Their business model is based on commission given by publishers on each sales. No fix fees, only success ! To multiply the occasion of sales, they gather as many reports as possible, on different industry, players, countries… For an aggregator : Catalog = Content, Content = Traffic, Traffic = Commission

We estimate that 200 000 multi-clients reports are available online. But few publishers providing deep catalog on the market : Datamonitor, Euromonitor or IDC are the most famous. All of these use the aggregator channel to distribute their industry reports.

Thus, leading aggregators share almost the same catalog. And nowadays, their only tangible difference is the language in which the user interface is translated. Aggregator now exist in English, French, Spanish, German, Korean….

Market Characteristics

The entry barriers on the market are really low, which explain the multiplication (proliferation ??) of new comers. Anyone can open a website, sign few agreement and begin to sell worldwide. Skills required are distance selling knowledge, and a dash of good sense

Publishers offer’s is really atomised. If a very large number of publishers sell industry reports, few of them are global, large and famous ! This last have developed specific part of their organization towards aggregator (ex : licensees manager), and specific offers too. Publishers conditions to enter an aggregator catalog are quite basic : warranty about marketing operation (ex : Call Center), and safe financial situation

The clients are potentially any organisation looking for information on market, competitors, products …. The benefits of using aggregator is double : - simplify their search - simplify ordering process, especially in case of multiple reports acquisition

If we had to make a typology, we could share clients between - Industry focused professional o They regularly look for information on a single industry, their company core market. Usually, they are working as marketing or sales manager - Multi-industries players o They look for information on a number of industry, their company is selling services to different markets. Obvious examples are consulting firm, banks, VC…. - Administration and Governmental organisation

We will publish next week the second chapter of this paper, and will then present the competitive landscape and the most important event that occurs for 10 years

Informa takes Datamonitor over

Nicolas — Fri, 18 May 2007 17:36:00 +0200

The market research industry is quickly changing ( and consolidating) this last weeks !

Two weeks after aggregators, (We made a post recently regarding the acquisition of Profound - TBI by Marketresearch), two publishers are making the headlines today.

Informa takes Datamonitor over, for the humble sum of $ 1 billion ! Whouou!!! Well, we can consider that Datamonitor business model is stable, that a important part of their revenues are based on subscription (if anyone can give us more information about that, we would really appreciate !!)

Synergy must be really significant between these two organisations to reach such a price. Here are two of them that seems obvious to me : - Both of them are targeting Fortunes 500 companies - They are not covering the same industries

If you are publishing or distributing industry reports, keep a eye on our blog ! We will keep you informed about next operations. And do you know what ? I bet this will involve web 3.0 information specialists, such as Reportlinker….

Search Engine Watch gives its opinion on Reportlinker

Nicolas — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 20:33:00 +0200

With its specialisation on the SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Search ENgine Watch considers that Reportlinker "attempts to filter the results of regular engines that are imapct by SEM efforts". Relevant open access information are more difficult to find. Reportlinker brings its solution, dedicated to industry reports. Read the article here.