business to business

B2B online media and events company TechTarget (NSDQ: TTGT) has acquired The Brian Madden Company, a Website and conference provider geared toward IT professionals in the cloud-computing space. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The CEO of B2B publisher Reed Business Information, Gerard van de Aast, is to step down next month and will relinquish his positions on the boards of both RBI and parent company Reed Elsevier (NYSE: RUK), throwing even more uncertainty on the former's planned divestment from the latter. From December 15, RBI's UK CEO Keith Jones will become acting CEO for the division worldwide "pending resolution of the current divestment process" – whenever that might be.

The CEO of B2B publisher Reed Business Information, Gerard van de Aast, is to step down next month and will relinquish his positions on the boards of both RBI and parent company Reed Elsevier (NYSE: RUK), throwing even more uncertainty on the former's planned divestment from the latter. From December 15, RBI's UK CEO Keith Jones will become acting CEO for the division worldwide "pending resolution of the current divestment process" – whenever that might be.

Consider this idea: Marketing leadership is shifting from command-and-control to cultivate-and-coach. My early business-to-business marketing experiences included heavy-handed dictation of superlative messaging that the organization was expected to follow. It was the norm for many years, and is still very much alive today. But things are changing. I now find marketing leadership to be more an art of humility, affinity and open confrontation of weakness.

My colleague Mark Cochrane is in Tokyo while I am in Istanbul and has filed this guest posting for the blog:

A new digital studio called Agility Studios, started by three online vets, has launched today. The company, based in Los Angeles, has been founded by Scott Ehrlich, former VP of media at RealNetworks, who will serve as the company's CEO; Larry Tanz, till recently the President and CEO of LivePlanet, and will be the President and COO; and Keith Quinn, recently SVP of Production & Development for LivePlanet, who will oversee programming and production as the company's Chief Creative Officer.

-- Project Kangaroo: CBS Interactive's longtime CTO and SVP Mark Kortekaas has joined Project Kangaroo, a UK VOD platform similar to Hulu, as CTO. Kortekaas, at CBS (NYSE: CBS) since 2000, left in September, just a couple of months after CBS bought CNET. Kortekaas had development oversight of CBS.com, CBSNews.com and CBS.Sportsline.com.

Craig Rosenberg recently created a list of the most influential people in B2B Demand Generation, and I’m honored to have been included. Many know Craig through his blog, Funnelholic, or through his company Tippit. Funnelholic is a very insightful and original B2B marketing blog written for those marketers who live and work at the top of the B2B funnel.

Local online ad spending, which Borrell Associates had previously expected to keep on chugging away before leveling off in 2012, is set for "little or no growth" in 2008, a result of the financial meltdown, the local media researcher says. Putting its numbers in context, Borrell says that offline media will drop 1.4 percent next year, while interactive media increases 7.2 percent.

OK, well this just goes to prove that Tom Crampton is cleverer than me and you all knew that already didn't you. I said yesterday, "Try as I might, I can't really think of an Asian B2B media link for the Obama victory".