How VentureBeat is growing events and ad revenue

Kayleigh Barber of Digiday spoke with VentureBeat chief strategy officer Gina Joseph about how its growing revenue from events and advertising.

Here is an excerpt:

Giving advertisers a realistic understanding of event marketing 

We saw about [100%] growth in events sponsorships [year over year] and that’s also partially because we added more events to the calendar. And that was in response to the demand. So we said, “Wow, there’s a lot of demand for our content, how can we keep the engagement going?” And so that’s actually one of the things that I’ve also encouraged our partners is, don’t plan to just make a big splash at a big event. You have to think about your go-to market strategy leading up to the event, after the event [and] how you’re really engaging with the community. It only goes so far if you’re a headline sponsor for a big event and then you kind of disappear. Authenticity is going to be even more important.

Revenue breakdown

Events is about 50% of our revenue and that has stayed steady. We continue to see that and I do see a bit more growth on the digital side, but because when we do bring in those custom event sponsorships, which can range — our event sponsorships can range from $35,000 to $1.5 million. And that is really reflective of our process of how we’re going to put together the right partnership opportunity.

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