Why Media & Events Work Hand in Hand

I’m wrapping up a great week in Spain at the MX3 Barcelona event. Thank you to everyone who came up and introduced themselves. It was great meeting so many of you. It’s incredible to think about the fact that there are people all over the world who are reading A Media Operator. So, thank you so much. Naturally, attending an event has me thinking a lot about events.

One of the topics that came up at the event was the intersection of events and digital. Over the years, companies have shifted from their media businesses to focusing exclusively on events. But as one operator on stage said:

Being an events only business is an investor-decision, not an audience decision. How can you really serve your audience only three days a year and ignore the other 362?

That resonated with me, in large part because I have always been someone who has built media first. AMO went for years as just a newsletter before I introduced my first in-person event. CoinDesk and Morning Brew were the same; we didn’t even attempt in-person events until we had built audiences.

And yet, many events companies have made decisions with that investor in mind over the audience. Informa sold many of its media assets in the late 2010s to focus on events because they had much stronger margins. Heck, it was only a few months before Covid that Endeavor Business Media acquired 20 brands from Informa. In hindsight, that was likely a mistake for Informa, and I think it helps explain why, only a couple of years later, it rushed back in and acquired Industry Dive for a very strong valuation.

The question is whether we will see this happen again. I was speaking with one b2b executive who posed an interesting question: “Is diversification an advantage, or is it a detractor now from the buyer’s perspective? If your prospective buyer is primarily an events company and you’ve got a lot of digital, what will they do with you?”

It’s a very fair question. Another operator, who has been talking with many on the buy side, said that many buyers have been spooked about the ad markets and are focused more on events.

And I get it. The vast majority of marketers only spend on events. It has been a dynamite few years for in-person activations. And if you reach a certain level of scale, the margins on events can be pretty incredible. But it would be a mistake to focus almost exclusively on events.

Even if we disregard the direct monetization of media assets, there are a number of reasons why having a media property can ensure that your events business is significantly stronger. The reality is that the two sides actually work together. It might appear like there’s a margin compression by having digital assets, but I’d argue it unlocks additional growth—some of it is just not as quickly seen.

First and foremost, having a year-round media operation builds a deeper connection to the audience. This is brand building. A big reason that CoinDesk’s Consensus became the most significant crypto event at the time was because it was delivering value to its audience year-round. Every day, readers got something of value, so when it came time for them to purchase a ticket, they had a stronger feeling about the brand.

Compare that to an event that operates only three days a year. For the rest of the year, the prospective attendee knows very little about what’s happening with that event. And while legacy events have a built-in habit, newer ones will be pushing a boulder uphill to ensure attendees don’t forget about them. A media business helps get around this.

Second, media can act as automated user research to help inform what topics you should cover at the event. If you’re properly tracking your audience, each article read is another data point telling you what your audience cares a lot about. One of the reasons there will always be an M&A panel at the AMO Summit is that I know that type of content resonates with this audience.

Third, you can use that audience tracking to focus your marketing better. Rather than sending a standard marketing campaign to the entire audience, you can build audience segments based on their consumption behavior. So, one segment might learn about panels and speakers that are more specific to them, while a different segment will get other information.

The goal is to focus the message more specifically on what we know the audience cares about. We can even use these when buying social media ads to promote the event.

Fourth, more tightly linking the event and digital activations strengthens your advertising performance. For example, if you know that a reader consumes a lot of content about one topic and then engages with a client’s white paper about said topic, perhaps inviting them to the event to get face time with that client is a good way to complete the funnel.

One full funnel activation I’ve long been a fan of includes the following four products:

• Own the topic sponsorship
• White paper lead gen
• Webinar lead generation
• Invitation to the event

And so, if the target audience reads about a specific topic, they get pushed into a funnel of white papers and webinars, progressively warming them up. After a few touch points, the people who make it to the bottom are invited to the event, where they get some face time with the sponsor.

One publisher told me a story about the above product where the total package cost $500,000 over a year. But at the end of it, they got three people to come to the event, and one of those people signed an eight-figure deal. These opportunities are only possible if you blend digital and events. Here is what I will say… this is hard. It is much easier to sell a booth than one of these innovative multi-touch programs. And so I understand why many event operators avoid it.

However, whether it’s direct monetization, growing the brand, better user research, or more targeted marketing, events and digital work best together. More publishers should be doing niche events, and events should be investing in great content. The outcome is a more substantial business all around. Why stop serving the audience for 362 days a year? That makes no sense.

Thanks for reading today’s AMO. If you have thoughts, hit reply or join the AMO Slack. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.