Still Best Ever Ad Sales? CEOs Talk Tariff Impacts

Businesses of all kinds are pulling forecasts, cutting outlooks and preparing for ad slowdowns as the U.S. levies tariffs on countries around the world and puts protectionist policies into play.

That appears to be less true for B2B media and events. For now. We spoke with Questex, HW Media and Endeavor in early February about their outlook for ad sales with some mixed if mostly positive outlooks.

Since then, Informa TechTarget—the B2B media company formed late last year when Informa bought TechTarget—reported expectations for no revenue growth in 2025.

“We are operating the business in a subdued environment, which has not been helped by recent financial market volatility, and therefore our guidance is for broadly flat revenue across the year,” the company said earlier this month.

We spoke to Questex’s Chief Executive Officer Paul Miller and HW Media’s CEO Clayton Collins again this week amid a changing scenario, and got some commentary from Nineteen Group’s Americas CEO Mary Larkin and Mansueto Ventures CEO Stephanie Mehta. We reached out to Endeavor’s CEO Chris Ferrell but didn’t hear back in time for publication.

There seems to be a general sense that it’s too soon to tell how much of an impact tariffs and the results of other U.S. policies will affect businesses. For the most part, things seem to be going as well as can be expected.

Questex’s Miller

Questex is an information and events company focused on the experience economy, and operates in hospitality, healthcare & life sciences, experiential technology and wellness​. It operates mainly in the U.S.

“As of right now, we are still pacing very strongly on the media business—a combination of content marketing programs and newsletter advertising—our Fierce products are on course for a record year as discussed earlier in the year and other markets holding up quite well to produce double digit growth on the whole. No impact yet of tariffs and the administration policies!”

HW Media’s Collins

HW Media is a media and information services company that covers all things U.S. housing.

“The advertising and sponsorship business is performing slightly above plan, which is a fabulous scenario! Both booked sales and pipeline are up double-digits compared to prior year. Running a business with forecastable revenue enables much more confidence in our investments in growth projects.

Our larger clients which include many public companies and scaled private equity-backed players are really investing in their growth. For the media business this translates to clients who historically purchased digital advertising solutions from HousingWire are expanding to event and podcast sponsorships. We’re definitely seeing more product diversification, which operationally means we need to keep investing in account management and client success.

For full-year 2025, I haven’t made any adjustments to plan or forecasts. But [we’re] also evolving how we get there. We’re investing more spend and human capital resources into audience and product marketing, and being very pragmatic with how we think about our tools and technology stack as AI enables a lot of efficient development opportunities.”

Nineteen’s Larkin

Nineteen is a media and events company operating in security, health & safety, emergency services, technology and more. It primarily operates in the UK and is seeking to grow in the U.S.

Margins may be [impacted] due to the cost of food and beverages and AV in particular.  Companies are attempting to mitigate some of these cost increases by looking for more efficient ways to run their events and increasing sponsorship opportunities that help cover some of the costs.

I think people would just manage the budget a little bit more tightly.

Mansueto’s Mehta

Mansueto Ventures owns Fast Company and Inc., business news publications focused on venture capital backed-companies and entrepreneurs, respectively.

Specifically referring to events: “We are starting to hear some of our vendors talk about prices going up, and so that will certainly impact either the attendee experience or our margins as we try to manage through all of that.

All of the exhibit space and all of the swag, and all of the things that go into making a conference, a lot of that is manufactured abroad, there’s just no way of getting around that.”

Mansueto is trying to “maintain really, really strong cost discipline around the execution of our events” but acknowledges that rising vendor prices could affect the attendee experience and profit margins.