Outsourced Custom Publishing Second-Fastest Industry Segment

According to the latest research from private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), outsourced custom publishing is the second-fastest growing area of marketing spend, behind only word-of-mouth marketing. The full research states that outsourced custom publishing grew an average of 16.5% from 2002-2007 to an estimated $5.46 billion.

The combination of outsourced custom publishing and branded entertainment is valued at $27.76 billion according to VSS, which is substantially less than recent studies from the Custom Publishing Council and ContentWise, which estimates the total spending of custom content in the range of $48 to $55 billion.

Frankly, determining an accurate number for the custom content/content marketing industry is almost impossible, since organizational budgets usually do not break out custom as a separate line item.  Nonetheless, VSS takes an apples-to-apples comparison each year, and the growth rate number should be trusted.

What does this mean?  This means one of two things - either companies are spending more on custom publishing as a whole (which they are) or they are outsourcing more and doing less internally.  My take is that both are happening simultaneously.

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Comments

[Ian Alexander]

My projects verify both are happening and the project management/client management is proving to be as or more important than the execution.

Ian Alexander

[Hersh Bhardwaj]

I strongly believe that outsourcing has increased. Smarter companies are doing a lot of resource-check and fast turning into decidion making entities and outsourcing anything thats a chore. Thats my tuppence on the topic!

[Joe Pulizzi]

@Ian - your model is a case study of the research.

@Hersh - Outsourcing, especially with corporate content development is here to stay. With less than 20% of these kinds of projects fully outsourced, there is lots of room to run.

[KPO India]

I agree; as long as US and European companies are looking for ways to run their businesses more cost effectively but with the same high quality, the outsourcing industry will remain strong.