Category: Affiliate Marketing Tips

It turns out that more publishers are getting a large portion of their revenue from events than they were six months ago: This past winter, only 9% of respondents to Digiday’s survey said events drive a large chunk of their revenue. That number jumped to 18% this summer. Meanwhile, the percentage of publishers who said none of their revenue comes from events fell from 37% to 29% over the same period. And a significant number of publishers — 38%, to be exact — are getting at least a small portion of their revenue from events.

Digiday’s survey also found that the likelihood that publishers’ events revenue will grow even more in the coming months is high: 40% of respondents said building their events business will be a large focus in the next six months, up significantly from 29% in the winter. At the same time, the percentage of publishers who said they won’t focus at all on building their events business in the next six months fell from nearly a third six months ago to less than a quarter this summer.

It turns out this shift comes with good reason: Digiday’s survey found that people are back out at events. Six months ago, only 14% of publisher pros said they had attended an in-person business conference or event in the past month. This summer, that number jumped to 36%. And it’s safe to say that this increase is part of a significant trend, considering that in spring 2021 a mere 3% of respondents to Digiday’s survey said they had attended such an event in the past month.

Meanwhile, the percentage of publisher pros who said they haven’t attended an in-person conference or business event plummeted over the same period. In spring 2021, a whopping 87% of respondents to Digiday’s survey said they hadn’t been to such an event in the past year. This summer, only about a quarter of respondents said the same.

And as an economic downturn approaches, publishers banking on events is likely a good business move, Digiday’s survey found. In spring 2021, only 7% of respondents said they were willing to attend an in-person business conference or event in the next month. That number was up to 42% six months ago and increased even further to 64% this summer. If this trend continues, publishers that invest in their events business could open themselves up to a potentially lucrative revenue stream at a critical time.

“We’re guiding our internal investment and strategy teams to make sure that we have the framework that really fosters the inclusion of our diverse-owned outlets, working hard to remove the barriers that have long existed depending on the type of media that we’re working with in this space and also making sure that our diversity vendors are heard,” Prince said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast.

An important aspect of Dentsu’s economic empowerment team is that it doesn’t sit in a silo but is part of the media agency’s investment group. “It was really important that we have a seat at the table where the dollars are being allocated,” Prince said.

The economic empowerment team’s involvement in Dentsu clients’ investment strategies will play a role in ensuring that the agency group is able to meet its goal of 15% of its annual budget across media, creative and customer experience management to be spent with diverse-owned suppliers by 2025.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

Diverse media investment amid an economic downturn

Everyone is keeping track of the economic downturn and what that may entail. But given that this is a group of vendors that have not historically been at the table and have struggled to get access and their fair share, first in can’t be first out. This is a long-term thing. It’s really important that we [are] making sure we’re telling our clients that this needs to stay at the forefront as much as possible. Obviously when there are cuts, sometimes they can’t be avoided. But diverse cannot be the first thing on the chopping block.

The importance of payment windows

At Dentsu, we’re very proud of our 30-day payment terms that we rolled out last fall for minority-owned media. I personally have experience with what a pain point that is for so many vendors because a lot of companies don’t have the reserves to float with 30, 60, 90 days [of non-payment]. We realized that this was something that we could have a more immediate impact on in terms of making a change with that.

The year of results

This is the season. Sitting down with the strategy groups now figuring out what goals are, whether individual clients have specific goals [or], even if they don’t have goals, making sure that this is still part of the plans because it’s harder to come in after the fact. After Labor Day [is] when we start getting into that fall planning season, sitting down with the client leads and our clients as well to hear what their plans are and making sure we have a roadmap, where applicable, that we have these [diverse-owned] partners included going forth in 2023. Because with a lot of the pledges and commitments that have been done over the last two years, this is really about the year of results.

Getting diverse-owned publishers in the door

With our multicultural partners, what we try to do a couple times a month is bring them in for a presentation and really open it up widely to as many team members and as many account teams as well. So people get familiar with the property [to] know who’s out there, what their capabilities are. And then out of that, try to figure out, “OK, are there a couple clients that really make sense based on this presentation?” and then direct them to those respective teams to have further conversations, opportunities to pitch proposals, do the evaluations and go from there.