Editor’s Note: On Sept. 26 at 11am ET, Connectiv’s Digital Media Council will host ALM’s Matt Weiner and Joann Kropp talking about how ALM put its first-party data to work and created Audience First. The meeting can be attended remotely. Click here to register or email mkinsman@conectivb2b.net. 

The EU’s sweeping General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect on May 25 but now that it’s here, many companies are finding themselves scrambling even harder than before to make sure they’re in compliance. At a recent joint meeting of Connectiv’s Digital Media and Audience Marketing Councils, six different information companies (including Strategic Insight, Watt Global Media, EnsembleIQ, Brief Media, Northcoast Media and Northstar Travel Group) shared how they got their houses in order—and how they continue to make refinements to their audience data strategies as the realities of GDPR become clearer.

Every publisher uses social media but few are actually making money on it. During a recent Connectiv Digital Media Council meeting, Farm Journal’s VP of digital sales, Jim Arnold, showed how the company was able to turn its data into action and actually monetize social media.  “We’ve seen the future of digital, and from product delivery to sales strategy, it’s all about data,” he said.

At a recent Connectiv Digital Media Council meeting on "Invalid Traffic and Methods to Prevent Revenue Loss", Justin Hoffman, director of technology at Strategic Insight (formerly Asset International) and Dr. Augustine Fou, an independent ad fraud researcher, showed how ad fraud is growing in B2B but also how publishers can take some relatively straightforward steps to combat it. 

Paid content and information services account for about 20 percent of revenue for b2b media and information companies, according to the 2015 Connectiv Information Industry Census. By 2020, that percentage will grow to 23 percent, exceeding both print and digital advertising, trailing only events as the top moneymaker.

Content marketing is increasingly dominating the conversation (according to a recent study from Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs, 76 percent of B2B marketers plan to increase their content marketing efforts in 2016). And with just 30 percent of B2B marketers considering themselves effective at content marketing (down from 38 percent in 2015), B2B publishers have a golden opportunity to tap into that hunger.