“We’re going to grow this business,”
said Warren Nesbitt, executive director of
residential new construction. “We charged
every one of our business units to come up
with ideas. We’re pretty committed.”
United Business Media made the bold-
est move of any b-to-b media company in
the online events arena when last January
it established a stand-alone, virtual event
arm to work with in-house as well as out-
side clients, said Michael Doyle, executive
director of consultancy the Virtual Edge.
“[Marketers] are getting fewer re-
sources to do the same jobs, so they need to
outsource,” he said. “Event management
companies, production companies are get-
ting into this space; publishers—it’s a no-
brainer to me.”
UBM Studios has more than doubled the
number of virtual events the company will
host this year, currently planning about
70—a number that reflects considerable in-
house growth, said Kate Spellman, senior
VP-managing director of UBM Studios.
While such outside marketers as IBM Corp.
and KPMG account for only a small seg-
ment of those events, Spellman said she ex-
pects their contribution to the total to grow.
Publishers poised to provide
virtual event audience, expertise
Michael Doyle heads the Virtual Edge Insti- tute, a consulting company that promotes the development of virtual events technology and best practices. A publisher with experience
in event organization and online community development, he shared his views about the future of virtual events, the assets media companies bring to
the table and a promising new concept that could
leave Google Ad Words in the dust.
Media Business: Virtual events are on the rise.
What is fueling the media industry’s interest in this
medium?
Doyle: Publishers have come to the realization
that the world has changed. The way advertisers
invest money in their marketing programs has
changed forever. Just relying on [traditional] properties is not going to be a sustainable model. We need to look at
other ways to leverage community and subscribers.
MB: How do you think virtual events will evolve in the publishing industry?
Doyle: It’s going [to be about] perpetual environments,
where your readers can come on an ongoing basis and get in-
formation and connect to suppliers or peers in their industry.
They are going to be able to communicate and become much
more collaborative within their areas of interest. It will be a
place where digital events happen and information is made
available.
That direction is really going to have the biggest impact
on the publishing industry. I see it as a tremendous opportunity to really get control of a market space, a niche, and
become much more important than Google Ad Words.
MICHAEL
DOYLE
Executive
director and
publisher,
Virtual Edge
Institute
[Like] an iceberg, you have a part that is visible
above the water—the magazine’s website—and
what is going to be built out is this rich immersive en-
vironment, the [year-round] virtual environment
where most of the deeper connections and communi-
cations really take place. That’s really where the pub-
lishing industry will be able to build strong
relationships to their audiences.
