B2B Ad Sales in 2025: From Best Ever to Meh
B2B publishers of different ilk are reporting some of the best revenue in years in digital media—others, not so much.
Questex, whose industries range from hospitality to healthcare and life sciences, reported what appears to be its best year ever, while HW Media, a platform that covers housing, said that booked revenue is up 12% with a sales pipeline that is twice the size of the one a year ago.
On the other hand, anything related to supply chains and manufacturing is struggling. U.S. President Donald Trump’s whiplash on tariffs against China, Canada and Mexico have made it difficult for advertisers to plan and budget.
Those companies covering a diverse stable of markets are in relatively decent condition, with some industries thriving and others weakening—cycles that are constantly in flux. One key condition to getting good results? Good content and sophisticated marketing offerings that can deliver as much or a little as an advertiser wants.
Paul Miller, CEO of Questex
Questex is having its best year since Paul Miller joined the company in 2018, and he suspects it’s the best in company history.
Covid saw ad spending on digital soar, only to tumble over the past two years. Now, even as events continue to be a major moneymaker, digital revenue is pacing some 20% ahead of where Questex was in January 2024. Events are pacing up 16% from a year ago.
“We have seen an incredibly robust November, December, January, bookings for the year,” Miller said. “There’s a good feeling of positivity around the company right now. It’s a really good feeling.”
He’s also seeing a big uptick in the number of annual deals over quarterly deals, which Miller attributes to demonstrated ROI, as well as limited advertising slots, creating a sense of exclusivity and scarcity.
It helps that Questex is in industries like life sciences and health care, which are solid markets. Miller said that not being overly exposed to banner advertising, AI and search engine disruption has been helpful. “There are two core elements of revenue, so newsletters, believe it or not, given all of the technology, they are still things that people open, read with a cup of coffee,” Miller said. “And then we have a lot of content marketing type of programs, webinars, white paper, delivery, creation and delivery, all of which are very lead generation or demand generation, ROI based.”
Fundamental to success is the quality of the content, something that the B2B industry in general has not prioritized over the past decade or more. While an AI model can be trained to create content, it’s no way to develop the trust that keeps readers loyal.
“The industry in general, over the last two decades, got caught in an eyeballs and traffic game and it became a bit of a hamster wheel, almost a rat race of who’s got the most traffic, who’s got the most eyeballs, who’s got the most page views,” Miller said.
Better measures would be gauging if the database of readers is growing, as well as the quality of information about those readers. Investing in editorial was Miller’s first move upon joining Questex. The team was bare bones at the time.
“Content is core for us. And we’ve basically built a whole system where those editors can see what’s interesting to their readers and then figure out what stories they could add that would bring those readers even closer to us,” Miller said. “Great content brings in great people that advertisers then want to reach.”
Questex also doesn’t start by pitching individual ad products, but instead asks the customer about their goals and challenges and then puts together a customized “wave of solutions” to address those needs, like digital advertising, content marketing, webinars and event sponsorships, designed to deliver measurable ROI for the customer.
“Our go to market approach has been designed not to talk to customers about point solutions,” Miller said. The company asks: “What are you trying to achieve this year? Do you have five new product launches that you’re trying to bring to market? What’s your budget around that product launch?”
Chris Ferrell, co-founder and CEO at Endeavor Business Media
Endeavor Business Media is also seeing a mixed picture with events sales pacing ahead of last year, marketing services also a couple of points above and media ad sales lagging.
“It’s really primarily the manufacturing industry where we’re seeing some lagging, and it largely seems to be driven by concerns about what tariffs are going to mean for supply chain,” Ferrell said. “It’s just the uncertainty around that is causing a lot of those manufacturing processing oriented clients to be a little slower to make decisions.”
Endeavor services more than 7,000 clients and sends out some 400 newsletters, which Ferrell said are doing pretty well. Marketing clients are demanding ever more complex and sophisticated services from publishers with a strong interest in lead generation and custom content creation.
“It’s harder for smaller competitors to staff for that, so it’s an advantage that scale does bring to us. I can have a team dedicated to custom content creation,” Ferrell said.
The Trump administration’s back and forth over tariffs is driving a lot of uncertainty across industries.
“Anytime there’s a change in policy, there are different industry sectors that are winners and losers to varying degrees. Everybody is trying to sort that out,” Ferrell said. “That’s the reassuring thing about having a diversified model where we’re in multiple industries. Some of them will likely be up and have great years, and some of them may have a tough time for the next four years.”
Clayton Collins, co-founder and CEO at HW Media
HW Media, which covers the housing industry, reported booked 2025 revenue for the media business is 12% higher than it was last year at this time, as of January 31.
“But the exciting part is our sales pipeline which is 2.0x the size of the pipeline on 1/31 last year,” Clayton said. “This sets us up for a much better Q2.”
It also helps predictions of budgeting and forecasting, and gives the company more confidence in where to invest in marketing and audience growth, Collins said.
“We have a few product areas where we already have or are approaching inventory sellout scenarios—like sponsorships for our AI Summit and text advertising in core newsletters,” he said.
The good news comes after three years of turmoil for the housing industry, which went from a record low interest rate environment with record high home sales volume to a rapid increase of rates from 3% to close to 8% in an 18 month timeline.
It was a time when clients who had been spending for years went dormant or substantially reduced the size of campaigns, Collins said.
“What we’re seeing right now is a lot of accounts that were inactive and in 2023 and part of 2024 come back to active status and are energetic and optimistic about their business prospects,” Collins said. “We have clients that are trying to really put a stake in the ground and make waves in 2025 because last year they saw their sales velocity pipelines start to shrink or go dormant completely, and executive teams are highly focused on growth.”
The top 25 accounts that advertise with HW Media, the most strategic accounts, are annual deals that incorporate multiple products. Also increasingly important for HW is user revenue products, which are getting a lion’s share of the tech, product and marketing teams’s energy.
“We recognize that we have a little more exposure to market conditions on the advertising business than we do on the user revenue side,” Collins said. “If we get smacked in the face and rates go up to 8% again, we’re probably going to see a softening in the advertising business, and there’s not a lot we can do to control that, but we can control our destiny with a much higher degree of confidence on the user revenue side.”
