Being an IT professional, I get free subscriptions to any number of trade magazines and journals. In theory, you could buy subs to a number of these, but in practice they make their money off of ads — which they justify by making “free” subscribers fill out (or answer on the phone) eleventy dozen questions about staff size, purchasing authority, budgets, etc. I understand that’s so that they can then say to the advertisers, “Spend your ad dollars on us, because our average reader is a CIO who oversees a budget of $20MM and a staff of 750. W00T!”
But it’s damned annoying, especially since I rarely have the profile they’re looking for, even though they gently nudge you in the direction of the sorts of things they want. The irony being that even our CIO couldn’t answer in all the detail they ask. Sure, most folks making up SWAGs for most of the values, but it’s still 5-10 minutes out of one’s life, such that I usually just skip it (as I receive more reading material at the office already than I could possibly read).
On the other hand, it was very nice being quizzed by someone today who only wanted to know (for a renewal) how many folks we have world-wide, and is this still my mailing address. It won’t make me read their stuff any more thoroughly, but it kept me from saying, “Sorry, not interested, no time,” which may be the reason they went with the far less intrusive and time-consuming approach.