When are events expected to return to pre-pandemic levels, and how are advertisers preparing?

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It’s so close, convention centers and travelers can taste it

Roughly 81% of professionals who worked from home during the pandemic missed in-person meetings and conventions. They also will be just as likely, if not more, to attend trade shows and events in the future. Leaders located in major event hubs are hoping that will be in the second half of 2021.

“As we move forward with the vaccine rollout, we expect the second half of the year will start to ramp back up,” said Stephanie Glanzer, chief sales officer for MGM Resorts International. “I’m a strong believer that we’ll come out of this, and Las Vegas will remain the top destination.”

Small events have returned to Vegas, but the first major event will take place in June. The World of Concrete trade show typically attracts tens of thousands of people, and will be the one of the first trade shows to utilize Las Vegas Convention Center’s new $980.3 million West Hall expansion. 

It’s not just Vegas. Hotels, airlines, and convention centers across the world are gearing up for a resurgence of business travelers once vaccines are fully distributed. 

According to Harvard Business Review, business travel made up 13% of international travel before the pandemic. Though this number may seem small at surface-level, international travel was critical for communication, trade and management of multinational corporations. For this reason, HBR predicts that international business travel will return to pre-pandemic levels before travel for internal meetings.  

In fact, Europeans have already started traveling to Dubai for major conferences. 

Keep in mind, McKinsey says overall global air travel is not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024, but “travel for sales and client-related meetings is most likely to be among the first to return.”

MediaRadar Insights

With business leaders eager to meet clients in person, are advertisers trying to speed recovery up? 

Not yet.

Spend in the B2B travel and conference space in January and February of 2021 totaled just over $586k. Before the pandemic, this spend was $2.4mm across B2B print and digital formats.

Though spending hasn’t recovered, brands who are spending right now include convention centers in: Tennessee, Puerto Rico, New Jersey ,Texas, and Idaho. Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and United Airlines are also advertising in the B2B space.

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They create significant revenue, foster engagement and provide space for new relationships. 

The average retail event can bring in over $6 million — but 2020 is shaping up differently due to Coronavirus. 

Many key trade shows have rescheduled or cancelled completely. Events that are set to continue are seeing many participants withdraw from their commitments, as large corporations are restricting employees from participating. 

Here we cover the latest on coronavirus and the major trade shows that have been impacted.

We encourage you to subscribe to our Blog for the latest data surrounding the advertising industry. We will provide daily updates as COVID-19 continues to make its mark on the US economy.

The latest on Coronavirus

The COVID-19 virus (coronavirus) has now spread to 77 countries, killed more than 3,200 people and infected more than 100,000. 

As of March 10, the US death toll according to the CDC had reached 25 people. 

Bill Gates stated that this virus is now behaving like the “once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about.”

The Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation teamed up to help with prevention efforts. With their support, researchers in Cambodia have identified the full genome of the virus, making it much easier and faster to identify in people.

On top of this effort, Facebook is giving free advertisements to the World Health Organization and removing false information from its platform. This is a strikingly different approach than Facebook’s approach towards political ads and misinformation. 

Facebook recently announced the cancellation of its F8 conference that was scheduled for early May. Similarly, it announced that it would not be participating in the SXSW conference. 

Facebook is not alone. There have been a number of event cancellations that will impact a wide variety of industries and businesses. 

Conferences that are being rescheduled or cancelled

Business connections and advertising opportunities are pending on how global health leaders continue to control, or not control, the spread of COVID-19.

The first major cancellation announcement was the Mobile World Congress. The event hosts more than 1,200 companies and generates almost $500M Euro in economic impact for Barcelona. 

MediaRadar data places MWC is a top 5 event in terms of exhibiting and sponsorship revenue.

Other major events across industries that were cancelled include:

• Ceraconference was set to host energy and oil executives from over 80 countries in Houston. It was canceled.
• The American Physical Society canceled its largest meeting of the year just 34 hours before the event was set to begin. They faced backlash from thousands of doctors who had already arrived in Denver for the short notice.
• Google recently called off its Google I/O 2020 conference for developers. Google had already announced that it would convert other in-person events to an online format. It is suspected that this event will also be carried out online.
• The Geneva International Motor Show was cancelled after the Swiss government put a temporary ban on gatherings of more than 1,000 people. 

Others have been suspended: 

• The MIPIM property fair rescheduled its conference. It was supposed to be held between March 10 and 13th. While this is being written, it is rescheduled for June 2-5. However, it’s believed up to 10% of attendees have already canceled.
• The Game Developers Conference (GDC) was suspended after several major attendees, like Microsoft, pulled out. 

Some events will be transformed from in-person events to a purely online format, like the Adobe Summit.

SXSW Ordered to Cancel: A Reschedule is Pending

Some events plan to carry on as normal, but plans are changing daily. 

SXSW organizers originally said they had no plans to cancel or suspend the annual event that brings over 400,000 international travelers to Austin, Texas. 

The event’s determination to continue was not looking promising when Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey canceled his keynote place at the event. Other major VC’s and Startups were pulling out and a petition on Change.org reached over 55,000 signatures to cancel the event. The event’s organizers were ordered to cancel the event just one week before it was set to take place.

Last year, the event made $355.9 million for the city of Austin. Refund policies are unclear and lost revenues are not fully accounted for. There are talks about the possibility of rescheduling the event for later in the year. 

The SXSW ordeal exemplifies just how important trade shows can be, but how the protection of public health is paramount this year. The list of events and trade shows that have been rescheduled or cancelled is growing daily. Read here for a daily update.  

We were enjoying our coffees, while Mike Martinelli, Group Digital Publisher of Today Media, came into the room with a gong in his hand. Yes, you read that right – a gong. He sat it on the table, and after I introduced him and the rest of the panel, he told everyone to strap in and get ready. The title of this breakout session was “Digital Sales 101”, however, Mike and his crew called it “60 Sales Ideas in 60 minutes.” Each of the panelists had prepared a number of slides with quick and easy digital sales ideas that we could go home with and put into action. Each one had 2 ideas every 2 minutes, and Mike rang the gong to make sure no one went over the time limit. It was fast, fun, and informative.

Irene Peterson of Mpls. St. Paul Magazine, Frank Tarascio of Westchester Magazine, and Susan Farkas of Washingtonian were among the Sales Ideas crew. They took simple ideas and made them BIG, like using your small audience to your advantage, how being a regional publication can be advantageous to your business, and how having a niche audience allows you to charge more for prime reader engagement.

The audience at the Digital Track was furiously jotting down notes. I myself couldn’t take enough notes, as the panel kept zipping through ideas and even stopped a few times to ask questions. The gong was ringing every minute, and I kept thinking of great ideas to bring to my regional clients. The icing on the cake – the slides are all available online! Check out the slides here.

The conference also included some exceptional keynote speakers, including Larry Burstein, former Publisher at New York Media. He spoke about New York Magazine’s strategic shift to digital—which now makes up 60% of New York Media’s total ad revenue—and advertisers’ willingness to experiment with native advertising, despite its time-consuming nature. “The internet is a different way to tell a story.”                                                               

MediaRadar would also like to congratulate all of the 2017 CRMA Award winners and recipients. See the complete list of CRMA winners here.

I could go on forever about more of my favorite takeaways from the rest of the conference sessions, but for now, I’ll leave you with some fun photos using MediaRadar’s custom Snapchat event filter.

Go forth and make those digital ideas grow! Until next year!

-Howard Schecter, Director of Sales

 MediaRadar