As a follow up to our diatribe yesterday on BusinessWeek consider this typically snarky comment from AdAge:

"Why the persistent drop for the business bibles? Business-to-business advertisers have found many more efficient, targeted ways to reach their customers. Brand campaigns remain an important component of their marketing, but they've also gotten much better at maintaining databases of the crucial decision makers who buy their products or services, focusing on preserving their loyalty and contacting them more or less directly than through a major magazine ad buy."

If you are in print - newspapers or magazines - this comment should really bug you. The author, Nat Ives, is wrong about the potential for print publications to generate response for non-branding campaigns but he is expressing a sentiment which is common in the advertising world. In other words, the advertisers you covet think he is right about magazines being a branding advertising medium. Further proof, that if print publications don't start proving response to their customers using any number of rudimentary tracking mechanisms (800#s, text addresses, unique urls), no one will.