Events, AI, Audience: Top Themes at the AMO Summit 2024
Hi! This is Christiana, AMO’s new reporter and, like many of you, I just returned from our action-packed summit in NYC. It’s our second such event and we are already preparing for the 2025 edition so pencil us in for October. Same place, but next year I’ll join Jacob on stage to host panels. Let’s see if I can rival him on the tough questions and sense of humor.
A few themes became clear throughout the day, notably events, AI and the importance of audience. I broke the trends down below, with highlights from some of our speakers. Let me know what you thought about our summit and what you’d like to see next year at cs@amediaoperator.com.
Events
Events were the topic of the day at the summit, pinpointed as a way to connect readers and sources while generating value for all involved. They also tend to rake in a pretty nice profit margin.
Axios said it has yet to see appetite for events go down, but they’re also cautious about exhausting the audience.
Eric Newcomer, ex-Bloomberg and founder of a VC newsletter, said his media property transformed from a pure newsletter 18 months ago to primarily being an events company.
As Newcomer explained the inception of his first event, he was heading to his bachelor party in San Francisco. Some friends who had office space there suggested hosting an event so he could write-off his flights as a business expense. He did. People loved it. And voila, a newsletter provider transitions into an events company.
“Man, it’s much easier to sell tickets to this event and sponsorship than it is, like, paid subscribers. And so you sort of lean into what people are excited about,” Newcomer said. He noted his paid subscribership is flat. “There’s certainly some opportunity to fight on subscriptions, but, like, events just don’t feel like we’re fighting, you know, they want to pay for it. They’re, like, they get to understand what they’re paying for. And so we’re just sort of leaning in.”
WorkWeek said it tries to have fun bringing people together, which jives with what Matt Middleton of Future Proof said about providing an experience and not just an event.
Middleton was a contrarian voice back during Covid, challenging the status quo by building an in-person event at peak-pandemic and making it work after a slow start. He took in $2.5 million on the first event, and lost $2.8 million on it, but his events are profitable now. He pointed out that having a great keynote speaker isn’t enough when we all talk on podcasts, so an event needs to provide more than just content.
Scarlett Sieber, chief strategy & growth officer at Money20/20, talked about the bringing together of like-minded people and holding events with real purpose and the relevance of creating connections.
There’s also the hugely important aspect of being able to network at events. Middleton largely dismissed the actual content of events, keynote speakers and the like, saying that it’s all about connection.
The Atlantic’s refreshingly forthcoming CEO Nicholas Thompson talked about his not really profitable events that nonetheless let his brand shine as a key part of strategy. They do what the affluent, influential audience they have wants: exclusive, private dinners and events that advertisers can use to tap into those rich people. Again, they somehow haven’t figured out how to make money on those, but people love them.
Bottom line? If you’re not tapping into the appetite for events, you are potentially missing out on major revenue, and if you’re smart about them, major profit.
M&A
People are desperate to do deals and can’t afford to wait anymore, according to Daniel Pitchford of Collingwood. The market has been frozen thanks to private equity that’s been sitting on investments for lack of buyers. That’s led to a certain amount of pent up demand. With lower U.S. interest rates, that could signal moves to come. That doesn’t mean it’s moving all that quickly. Buyers are still picky and the U.S. has been slow to return to dealmaking, while the UK has seen healthy movement.
Private equity firms are holding for longer, whether by choice or not depends on your perspective. Robert Gray, operating partner at EagleTree, a PE that owns ALM and Northstar Travel, said that they’d be happy to hold a good asset generating cash flow and be patient. They’ve held Northstar for eight years and ALM twice. Notably, EagleTree’s recent fund failed to raise as much as anticipated ($1.2 billion versus the expected $1.6 billion) with LPs looking to put money elsewhere with PE not returning capital quickly enough in a stagnant market.
Strategic partners (Informa having been a major recent player) will pay more but who else besides Informa is out there? Clarion Events is expected to be the next asset for sale, so depending on that buyer we may have more insight.
Paul Miller, CEO of Questex, a media & events company, failed to sell this year and is now looking to buy companies with EBITDA of between $5 million and $10 million, which Pitchford said would cost him $50 million to $60 million.
Advice if you’re looking to sell? Get your revenue growth in order, Miller said. Focus on fewer and higher value products with events, Pitchford said. Don’t forget about communities, Gray said.
Collingwood found that buyers want businesses with revenue growth of 15% to 20%, an EBITDA margin of 30% and revenue of $250,000 per person—among other things.
Audience, Engagement, Communities
If you don’t have a clear view of who you are writing for, your future may be at risk.
Axios has made it a priority to provide essential and differentiated content to their audiences, who they view as being policymakers, C-suite executives and dealmakers, said COO Allison Murphy. They want to provide scoops and expert takes their readers cannot get anywhere else. That means paying top dollar for the best talent.
WorkWeek is a growing collective of industry experts in healthcare, HR, marketing and more, and it’s almost profitable. They are now leaning into exclusive communities with tiered free and paying memberships, so very exclusive that only 30% of applicants get in, said Becca Sherman, a co-founder.
“Our creators are fostering great conversations in those communities, but it’s really the communities themselves where people are collaborating,” Sherman said. “They’re creating content within these communities. It really is a platform for them to connect across their industry.”
Semafor’s close to hitting profitability with its events (there’s that word again), which tend to be small and intimate, which is good for both readers and advertisers, according to CRO Rachel Oppenheim. Industry Dive’s finding success with webinars, again for both audience and marketers, said CRO Imogen Bradbury.
The Atlantic, which was losing $20 million a year when Thompson took over in 2021, is now profitable. Part of that is thanks to tapping into the very smart people who comprise readership and crave new ideas and read deeply and carefully—and giving them the appropriate content. Those people are highly-monetizable, he said, and a desirable segment for advertisers.
The Atlantic also got smarter with its paywall, moving quickly on experiments to increase the conversion rates. The team also spent time figuring out the proper pricing model to determine what people were willing to pay—and it was more than expected. Thompson raised subscription prices by 50%.
He’s also willing to invest in money-losing events like college tours, just to maintain the brand’s aura.
AI
In May, The Information’s Jessica Lessin published in The Atlantic that media companies are making a huge mistake with AI. Lessin’s argument was that media companies should have learned lessons from the past and not make deals with tech companies. Five days later, The Atlantic signed a deal with OpenAI.
The Atlantic’s Thompson argued that there are ways that working with tech companies can be great. Big tech was stealing their content anyway, so why not get paid for it? Thompson called the deal “a partnership” in which The Atlantic helps them evolve their products and maybe build a search tool.
“Figuring out how search is going to work in the Age of AI is incredibly important for me,” Thompson said. “We play a role in that. And then the third thing is that we will be part of their new search experience. You search for things, you will find Atlantic. Will it work as well as Google or 10 blue links? I don’t know. Will it be better than zero? Yes, absolutely.”
What of The New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement?
It will set the price for training data, Thompson said.
“What the courts are going to decide is both that, to some degree, that question, but also the real question, a subsidiary question, which is whether the AI companies violated copyright, whether they have fair use.”
AI companies will argue that they use the content in a “transformative” way and don’t actually keep copies of it, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
“What the media companies argue is actually, you’re taking our content and building a competitive product that is worth billions and billions of dollars, pay us. So the courts will decide. If the courts decide on the Times’s side, you’ll set a price, and all the AI companies will have to pay.
Thompson recently said he’s increasing the number of printed magazines to 12 from 10. It’s mostly a wash, financially. Printed features make more of a splash and Apple is more likely to make audio versions of printed stories. And, as he suggested, if AI destroys the internet because it’s just AI content , “maybe you’ll be really happy you have a print magazine, right?”