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.





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
Posted by: Ian Alexander | August 05, 2008 at 05:15 PM
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!
Posted by: Hersh Bhardwaj | August 07, 2008 at 04:21 AM
@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.
Posted by: Joe Pulizzi | August 08, 2008 at 12:37 AM
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.
Posted by: KPO India | June 03, 2010 at 12:35 PM