What’s shaping modern event marketing? Conversations from the AEO Marketing Social 2026

The latest AEO Marketing Social brought event marketers together for an evening of practical discussion, honest observations, and shared challenges around what modern event marketing now looks like in reality.

Across the roundtables, several themes surfaced repeatedly. Audience behaviour is becoming harder to predict, attribution is growing more complex, AI is reshaping discovery habits, and marketers are under increasing pressure to demonstrate commercial impact.

At the same time, the conversations consistently returned to one central point: the strongest event marketing still depends on understanding people, behaviour, and trust first.

Better data, better performance: using behavioural insight to drive conversions

Hosted by Jon Monk, ASP

Jon Monk opened the session by challenging a common assumption across marketing teams: that analytics platforms are giving a complete and reliable picture of audience behaviour.

“People do assume that on Google Analytics, it’s really accurate, and often that is just not the case unfortunately,” he explained.

The discussion explored how browser privacy settings, ad blockers, and tracking limitations are creating significant blind spots in reporting, particularly among Safari and Firefox users. For many organisers, large portions of audience activity are now far harder to track than they were only a few years ago.

Google Tag Gateway and server-side tracking became a major focus, with the session unpacking how improved tracking infrastructure can strengthen attribution, improve optimisation, and reduce wasted spend across campaigns.

Some of the strongest takeaways included:

• Better tracking improves campaign efficiency, with Jon noting that “the better the tracking you have, the lower your costs will be”
• Many teams are underestimating how much audience visibility they have already lost through browser restrictions
• Cleaner attribution gives marketers a more reliable understanding of what is genuinely driving performance across both paid and organic activity

The wider conversation also highlighted the importance of interrogating reporting more critically, rather than simply accepting dashboard data at face value.

Registered ≠ attending: The conversion problem for event marketers

Hosted by Kate Disley, TEMBO

Kate Disley’s session focused on one of the biggest ongoing frustrations for event marketers: the gap between registration numbers and actual onsite attendance.

“People are not rational decision-making machines,” Kate explained. “Registration is optimism and attendance is effort.”

Rather than concentrating purely on logistics or functional messaging, the discussion explored the psychology behind audience behaviour and the factors that influence whether someone follows through on their intention to attend.

The conversation centred around emotional investment, anticipation, audience participation, and reducing friction throughout the attendee journey.

Several ideas resonated particularly strongly:

• Audiences become more committed when they actively participate before an event through agenda building, networking, app downloads, or content interaction
• Social proof remains one of the strongest drivers of attendance, particularly when peers and respected industry figures are visibly involved
• The more effort attendees invest before an event, “the harder it becomes psychologically for them to disengage with it”

Examples around advocacy platforms, crowdsourced content, and personalised attendee journeys generated particularly engaged discussion across the room.

What stood out throughout the session was how much modern event marketing now overlaps with behavioural science and audience psychology.

AI visibility and appearing in AI-generated responses

Hosted by Tom McMahon, MCM

The session around AI visibility quickly became one of the evening’s biggest talking points, as attendees explored how audiences are increasingly using AI tools to discover, research, and compare events.

“In the past, someone would go on Google and type in ‘technology event Europe’,” Tom explained. “But as we all know, the majority of search is now happening on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.”

The discussion focused less on traditional SEO and more on discoverability, authenticity, and creating genuinely useful content that AI systems are more likely to surface within responses.

A few themes repeatedly came up during the conversation:

• Content structured around audience questions is becoming increasingly important
• Platforms such as Reddit, LinkedIn, and YouTube are gaining influence because AI models prioritise authentic discussion and real expertise
• Highly polished marketing language is often less effective than practical, experience-led content

As Tom summarised: “AI hates AI stuff.”

The conversation also touched on how website traffic patterns are evolving, with audiences often consuming information through AI-generated summaries before ever reaching an organiser’s website directly.

For many around the tables, the session reinforced that event organisers are already surrounded by valuable content opportunities through panels, speakers, interviews, and community discussions. The challenge now is using that content more consistently and more strategically.

Beyond the digital brochure: Using video to bring your event websites to life

Hosted by Chris Wickson, ReelFlow

Chris Wickson’s session explored the growing gap between the energy event brands create across social channels and the experience audiences often encounter when they finally arrive on an event website.

The conversation focused on how video can make websites feel more human, engaging, and conversion-focused throughout the attendee journey.

One of the strongest points raised was that audiences are increasingly responding to authenticity over highly polished production.

“That slightly less polished, authentic content actually outperformed spending 50 grand on a long-form corporate polished video,” Chris shared.

The session explored:

• Using video to showcase real people, speakers, teams, and attendee experiences
• Creating more engaging and personalised website journeys
• Repurposing live event content more effectively throughout the year

AI video tools also became a major topic of discussion, particularly the balance between efficiency and authenticity. Chris described the current landscape as “equal parts terrifying, exciting.”

A recurring point throughout the session was that many organisers are already surrounded by valuable content opportunities during live events, but still struggle to capture and repurpose them consistently enough.

Leadership roundtable: turning marketing data into business impact

Hosted by Sian Heaphy and Lydia Kirby, Bright- a Talan Company

New for 2026, the leadership roundtable brought senior event marketers together for a more candid conversation around reporting, audience quality, data overload, and demonstrating commercial impact.

Very quickly, the discussion moved beyond registrations and vanity metrics.

“There’s so many more data points other than visitor registration,” one attendee noted, as the room explored the growing importance of intent signals, engagement behaviour, hotel bookings, exhibitor activity, and content consumption.

Another attendee reflected on how moving from a free-to-attend model to a paid model had fundamentally changed how success was measured: “Registrations are a vanity metric… what’s important is people showing up onsite.”

One of the clearest themes throughout the session was the challenge of balancing access to huge volumes of data with understanding what actually matters.

The conversation explored:

• How AI and automation tools are helping teams analyse audience behaviour more quickly
• The increasing shift away from volume metrics and towards quality, relevance, and intent
• The difficulty of relying on traditional year-on-year reporting models as audience behaviour becomes less predictable

Several attendees also spoke openly about the operational realities behind the scenes, including fragmented systems, incomplete records, and inherited databases with limited audience detail.

One attendee described inheriting “20-year-old data” with very little segmentation attached.

The session also touched on the tension between reacting quickly to data and becoming overly reactive to short-term fluctuations.

“Sometimes we get very reactive versus pulling back a second and actually having confidence in the plan,” one speaker reflected.

By the close of the discussion, the conversation had widened into a broader reflection on audience fatigue, competition for attention, and the growing pressure on marketers to demonstrate both relevance and commercial value.

As one attendee put it: “You’re not competing with each other, you’re competing for attention.”

A shared theme across every session

Across all five discussions, one message came through consistently: event marketing is becoming increasingly dependent on trust, relevance, and genuine audience connection.

Whether the conversation focused on AI, data, conversion strategy, or video, the strongest-performing approaches all centred around understanding behaviour, creating useful experiences, and building stronger relationships with audiences over time.

Technology continues to evolve quickly, but the discussions throughout the evening reinforced that successful event marketing still depends on understanding people first.