Why Events are Becoming Audience-Building Engines

What if we have the audience/event relationship backward?

In a recent article in his AMO newsletter, Jacob Donnelly featured aibl, a new media and events company focused on AI. Despite being less than a year old—with roughly 1,000 newsletter subscribers and 5,000 LinkedIn followers—the company is already planning a major inaugural event this October.

Events veteran Terry O'Dwyer is building the business around media, events, sponsored content, and research. But what caught my attention wasn't the revenue mix. It was the sequence.

O'Dwyer said, "We're using an event-led model, in this first year, building the audience, which then feeds the event, generates the revenue, and we then, hopefully, will be able to monetize the audience later."

I'll admit it challenged my thinking.

I thought events followed audience

I've long been an advocate of "audience first, event next." Build the audience, then create products and experiences for that audience. In my mind, events were something you launched after you'd built enough scale to support them.

But that view was shaped by an events model that's becoming outdated.

From Presentations to Participation

For many of us, events meant presentations, PowerPoint slides, sponsored breaks, and maybe a breakout session if we were lucky. Success depended on scale: enough attendees to satisfy sponsors and cover costs.

Today's attendees have different expectations.

People don't gather to simply sit and listen. They gather to learn, solve problems, make connections, and share experiences. Time is their most precious resource, and every event competes with a growing list of demands on their calendars. Attendees need to justify the return on both the time and money being invested.

The most successful events recognize this shift. That's exactly what O'Dwyer and his team are trying to build.

Describing the aibl event, Donnelly wrote, "Don't expect speakers, panels, lectures, fireside chats and definitely don't expect death by PowerPoint."

Instead, attendees will work through use cases, workflows, live demos, and interactive roundtable discussions where people get their laptops out and actually do things, getting down to the nitty-gritty and getting their hands dirty, O'Dwyer told AMO.

Instead of talking heads, they create opportunities for participation. Instead of one-way presentations, they facilitate conversations beyond the Q & A at the end of a session. Case studies, workshops, and peer-to-peer problem solving often create more value than another keynote presentation.

One industry community uses the tagline: "No one has all the answers, but everyone has a few."

That's exactly the mindset today's best events embrace. The value isn't confined to the stage. When attendees learn from one another, the event becomes more than content delivery—it becomes a place where relationships form, ideas are exchanged, and people leave smarter than they arrived.

Which brings us back to the audience-versus-event question.

Maybe it's not a chicken-and-egg problem after all*

Selling event registrations requires many of the same skills as building an audience. One of the most effective event lead-generation campaigns I've seen replaced the traditional registration pitch with an interactive assessment. Prospective attendees identified their interests and business challenges, then received a customized agenda showing the sessions, discussions, and sponsors most relevant to them. Attendees saw a clear path to ROI. Sponsors received more qualified leads.

The same audience-building principle applies to event promotion: fish where the fish are.

Meet your audience where they already spend their time. Create content that helps them solve problems. Continue the conversation after the first click. A ticket purchase may be the immediate goal, but ongoing engagement creates far more opportunities for revenue and relationship-building.

Perhaps that's the real lesson from O'Dwyer's strategy.

The future isn't audience first or event first.

It's recognizing that audience and events are no longer separate businesses. The best events build audience. The strongest audiences create better events. Together, they create a flywheel that generates engagement, insight, community, and ultimately, revenue.

I've spent years arguing for "audience first, event next." I'm not abandoning that principle.

But I am adding an asterisk.

The best events don't just serve an audience—they help create one.