Despite how tumultuous the advertising has been as of recent, American content company, Leaf Group, is maximising on the potential of events.

Leaf Group’s art and commerce side of the business, which includes art marketplaces Society6 and Saatchi Art, is not reliant on advertising revenue, according to the company. Instead, advertising is being added to Leaf’s other art- and commerce-based events including The Other Art Fair, and through that addition, events have become one of the more lucrative areas of the business.

According to Lindsey Abramo, the recently appointed CRO of Leaf Group, “not only are our ticket sales up 25%, but so are sponsorship fees, and this is not over last year, this is up over 2019 prices”. 

As a company, Leaf Group has expressed content that brands themselves are uniquely becoming experiential. They have to be really thoughtful about what products they’re putting in front of their consumers, and how that intent shows up in real life. 

Furthermore, “per-event revenue for us has gone up and a lot of it is because we haven’t thought about all of the parts of our business through the experiential lens. So it is growing because we’re adding more to things that just didn’t exist in the past. But I also think we’re able to command a bigger sponsorship fee now too.

On the publisher side – at least from where I came from in the various women’s lifestyle businesses – [events were] sort of a flat concept, which is to bring an editorial concept to life, build it from the ground up, create an audience and plug brands into it. A lot of times, the build was so expensive, you had to have multiple brands, and that became a puzzle, trying to pull it all together. But I think now, brands are looking for more. And so I think you have to think a little bit uniquely about how to do that. And with that, you can charge more.”