Wednesday 29th September: Virtual events pay off for TechCrunch

September 29, 2021

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther.

In January, the operations team at TechCrunch made the call that no matter how tempting, all events would remain virtual for the rest of the year. Now, the publisher is on track to record its best year of revenue in company history, an achievement in which its lucrative events business has played a 'sizeable role'.

Since last year, virtual event attendance has risen 77%, and sponsorship revenue has climbed 144%. The publisher even increased the price of its sponsorship packages by 15% compared to last year. Interestingly, TechCrunch has gone for a 'low volume high value' strategy when it comes to attendees. They pre-qualified registrants to ensure that those who did sign up matched the audience profile advertisers wanted, and worked with brand partners on marketing campaigns to targeted groups.

They also reduced the size of audience groups from between 150-300 people to around 40. "We found that making a big conference small is a really great way to encourage engagement," said their Senior Director of Operations Joey Hinson.

The video-sharing app reached the billion mark after five years of meteoric growth. Only Facebook Messenger has achieved that milestone faster, and even then that was because Facebook forced an update through for existing mobile app users. It's particularly impressive given the increased competition and regulatory pressure the platform has been under (remember Trump attempting to ban it last year?)

Publishers aren't the only ones turning comments off on their social media pages after a high court ruling on liability for third-party comments in Australia. The ruling effectively determined that Facebook page owners were legally responsible for user comments on posts. A number of public figures and politicians are now turning off comments on their social media posts, as they simply can't moderate all comments. Utter madness.

Figuring out what you need to sacrifice to please the Google gods is challenging at the best of times, but this post neatly breaks down how the title tag - and any algorithmic rewrites - works. One to bookmark or forward to your SEO team, until the next big update...

This week's podcast:

The Manchester Mill is a subscription-based newsletter for the modern age. In this interview its founder Joshi Herrmann tells us why good local journalism demands having boots on the ground, how the sins of the past are impacting the journalism of today, and how he plans to expand into new cities and new revenue streams.

Our friends over at the International Magazine Centre are running their quarterly Hive event on Oct 13th, which our own Peter Houston is a moderator for. It's a simple concept: bring a business challenge to a small group of just three other people, listen to them discuss it (without interrupting) and get access to bespoke, instant and inspiring ideas. Everyone who has been to one raves about it, and there's a pay-it-forward option if you're feeling the pinch.