Event tech is unquestionably experiencing a dip from the huge levels of adoption in 2020 and 2021, and several companies, unfortunately, have recently had high-profile rounds of layoffs as in-person events return and virtual becomes an option rather than a necessity.
However, these trends don’t tell the whole story. First of all, event tech is incredibly broad, and much of it is not platform based. In many ways, event technology has become indispensable at in-person events thanks to virtual platforms because attendees and exhibitors became accustomed to more data-driven experiences.
“Beneath the clickbait headlines of boom and bust, the underlying story is that the event industry has never used technology as extensively as it does today,” says Luke Bilton, Chief Growth Officer at ExpoPlatform.
The pandemic fundamentally changed the way organizers plan events as well as the way attendees, speakers, and exhibitors experience them, which has put the industry on a positive trajectory moving forward. Bilton notes that app adoption has skyrocketed compared to pre-pandemic levels, and that marketers sponsoring or exhibiting at events expect to see real-time leads the same way they can manage their PPC campaigns.
“Whatever industry you choose to look at, whether it’s retail, media, utilities, the use of software doesn’t ever go back,” he adds. “In events, the trend towards more digitally-enabled experiences was already there, and the pandemic has been a massive acceleration of this.”
Vanessa Lovatt, Global Director of Customer Engagement at Notified, echoes this sentiment: “I totally get the human yearning to get back in person. But is the word we always say is ‘back’ in person. I don’t think we're an industry that goes backwards — we are an industry that goes forwards, and what lies ahead of us is almost certainly not just in person.”
When looking at virtual events specifically, the situation is not as dire as it may seem at first glance, either. An eventual decline in virtual events was inevitable, and comparing any metrics from 2022 to the last two highly unusual years is not useful. No live event organization is comparing attendee numbers and event outcomes to 2020 numbers for the same reason.
The market is going to have to course correct to a certain extent after a temporary period of enormous growth, but the outlook is still encouraging — the demand for virtual solutions is still up significantly from 2019, and while there may still be fluctuations, it is unlikely to drop back to pre-pandemic levels.
Splash, for example, is seeing close to a 50/50 split between in-person and virtual events being managed on the platform as of July — virtual is down from 80.7 percent in January, but it’s up from single digit percentages in 2019, which is notable and reflects a more accurate picture of the state of event tech.
“We believe that the pandemic was an opportunity to get more customers and bring more value to the customers we had around virtual,” shares Splash CEO Eric Holmen, “but the pandemic was an impermanent state, and we continued to invest in things that would benefit the return to in-person events when that came back around.”
The platform now supports a healthy mix of both formats, and Holmen notes that “virtual is here to stay, and our customers want to have one platform for both in person and virtual. That's very, very clear.”
“There are still huge numbers of companies that are completely bought into this [virtual],” adds Lovatt, “and many of those that are going back to doing in person are not automatically stopping virtual. It's not instead of, it's as well as, and they're trying to work out how to balance it. Whilst the new balances will no doubt vary radically according to use case, the virtual element is not going anywhere — it's just evolving.”
While some event tech companies may have been overvalued or grown too quickly and unsustainably during the height of the pandemic, the increased investor interest in the sector will likely end up being a net positive thing.
“Right now, the mega VC investments of 2020 and 2021 feel like they haven’t done the sector a huge favor, but in the longer term, they’re definitely going to help the sector,” says Lovatt. Holmen agrees that in the grand scheme, the attention paid to virtual events during the pandemic was very good, and perhaps most importantly, it prompted a lot of innovation in the space.
“A whole lot of experimentation came with all the money that was pumped into the event tech space,” he says. “So we've learned what works and what doesn't work from a consumer experience standpoint, and that could help accelerate some event experiences for the decades to come.”
Holmen also notes that this innovation has brought in new users such as marketing operations and digital marketing professionals as events have become part of companies’ greater marketing stack. “The digital transformation trends of the marketing stack were already heading that way, but the pace of innovation and experimentation really accelerated the transformation, and that's a very good thing for event tech as a whole,” he says.
Moving forward, both in-person and virtual event tech will play an important role and providers will need to invest in both as event programs continue to evolve. Bilton’s focus is on staying in tune with the market and finding ways to further enhance the event experience through technology, whether it’s providing better lead data to exhibitors, enabling more personalized experiences, or facilitating curated meetings.
Lovatt also believes that more collaboration between event producers and tech providers will be key to the success of the industry coming out of the pandemic. “Everybody in the whole sector — whether you’re in event production, video streaming, live events, or if you’re a venue — everybody wins in five or so years if we all work together now to identify how we grow the sector to be stronger and more diverse, with different channels — both in person and online — that actually work together,” she says.
“It’s not about deciding between virtual or in-person. It’s about how we get the best of both in a way that genuinely is best for the attendees and the sponsors and the speakers. How do we make sure that everyone gets what they need and has a really great time? It's probably not a one size fits all solution, and it’s probably not just one of those methods. I think we’re going into a period now where collaboration is everything in order to figure that out.”