Good morning, Marketers, and place your bets on the future of virtual events.
I think all of us — journalists and publishers, marketers and vendors — understand that virtual events will be a critical part of our lives for at least another six months, if not a year. But after that?
Everyone has an opinion. I’ve certainly been arguing that there’s not putting the genie back in the bottle: the kinds of virtual events which work well will be with us indefinitely, not least because of their potential reach. One person who would agree with me is Sharat Sharan, co-founder and CEO of ON24, the digital experience platform. Last fall he told me: “We’re all looking forward to physical events coming back, but the trend towards more online customer engagement has been accelerated, and that is going to continue. I don’t think it’s a reversible trend.”
ON24 is inviting people to bet that Sharat is right. As we reported last week, the company filed for an IPO on the back of strong growth in 2020 (after a couple of years of net losses). With some 7,000 vendors in the martech space, it’s inevitable that someone writing about the space knows some of them better than others (and some, I confess, not at all). In my various roles as a tech journalist, ON24 has had a kind of ubiquity. I’ve written about them, of course. I’ve interviewed Sharat more than once. I’ve used their webinar platform. But I’ve also appeared at their Webinar World conference, and co-hosted ON24 webinars with their Mark Bornstein — six feet plus of irrepressible enthusiasm, and self-designated Chief Webinerd. If you’ve ever seen a Bornstein webinar, you’ll know what I mean.
Which is all to say that I’ll be following the course of the IPO with particular interest. And, along with everyone else, I’ll be following what happens with virtual events when — at last — we have in-person events again.
Kim Davis
Editorial Director
