For all the talk of digital transformation, the real transition for many B2B publishers was becoming events companies with media rather than media companies with events. Events typically offered better margins (especially attractive to PE-owners looking to boost revenue then flip for a tidy profit) and didn’t require the headaches of building infrastructure and new skills that digital demanded.

"Luckily publishers have the benefit of old archives, and you don't need to be creating new content all the time. You can simply recycle older content and optimize it for the web and SEO. To tell if content is effective, we live in Google Analytics and a variety of other tools to see where new traffic is coming from, and whether it's staying."