BtoB Issue: Special Report

The Media Power 50 list was created in 2000 in part to display the variety of outlets available to b2b marketers to help reach their audiences with advertising messages. In this year's incarnation are billboards, magazines, newspapers, social media sites, TV programs and websites.

The past decade has been filled with considerable innovation. Among the changes, the Internet has spawned search marketing and social media, both of which have transformed the way b2b marketers communicate with their audiences.

A number of brands on this year's Media Power 50 didn't exist or were in their infancy when the first list appeared, including AllBusiness.com, BNET, Facebook, GlobalSpec, Google, LinkedIn, Manta Media, TechTarget and Twitter.

But after more than a decade marked by almost constant change, it's perhaps surprising to find so many old-school brands remaining on the list. These traditional brands make up more than 80% of this year's Media Power 50, starting with The Wall Street Journal, which ranked No. 1 for the 12th consecutive year.

The traditional brands on the list have one thing in common: They have been unafraid to adapt to the World Wide Web and all it offers. The Journal is a prime example. It has embraced the Internet and was one of the first media brands to introduce an iPad app when the revolutionary tablet appeared last year.

But the Journal is not alone: Forbes is another such example. “What always strikes me about Forbes is almost every year they are delivering the "new, new thing' in business media,” Rick Segal, president worldwide-chief practice officer of b2b agency gyro, said in an interview for this year's report.

Although business audiences have been quick to take to new media brands, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and TechTarget, they have also followed traditional brands as they moved from print and television to the Web.

A clue as to why this is so can be seen in the latest “Decision Dynamics” survey conducted by Doremus and the Financial Times. A key takeaway from the survey: Executives tend to cleave to traditional brands, primarily because they have confidence in the information those brands report.

“A major theme of this year's "Decision Dynamics' survey has been "who do you trust?' Media outlets created by professional journalists are preferred over user-generated content sites by [about] three to one,” Daniel Rothman, director-research in the Americas for FT, said in a statement.

Eighty-two percent of respondents said they prefer websites tied to traditional media brands such as newspapers and magazines compared to just 5% who preferred sites that originated as digital channels. Fifty-three percent said they preferred professionally edited and reported websites versus just 19% with a preference for sites featuring user-generated content.

That appears to be good news for traditional media brands. The bad news is that the Internet will probably enable more changes that these brands will need to adapt to, in a hurry, if they want to remain relevant to their readers and advertisers.