Research Briefing: Publisher events and influencer partnerships offer key brand marketing opportunities

In this edition of the Digiday+ Research Briefing, we examine how publisher-hosted events and influencer partnerships offer brands more key marketing opportunities, how The New Yorker refocused its newsletter strategy in the last year, and how digital media companies are exploring the fediverse, as seen in recent data from Digiday+ Research.

52% of publishers plan to grow their events business

Although brands have used events to generate consumer interest in their products for years, publisher-hosted events are becoming a particularly useful brand marketing opportunity this year. This is according to a survey of 174 marketing professionals featured in Digiday+ Research’s 2024 brand guide to events, which found that many publications plan to build their events businesses in 2024. 

Publisher-hosted events allow brands to promote their products through sponsorships and collaborations, and to achieve goals such as generating brand buzz and driving sales. In the first quarter of 2024, slightly more than half of publisher respondents (52%) told Digiday they would focus at least a little on growing their events business in the next six months.

Influencer partnerships also emerged as another key strategy that gives brands additional touch points for customer engagement. Combining influencer marketing and event marketing can help boost an event’s exposure and create a lasting impression with an extended audience. Partnering with influencers who align with a brand’s values can create positive buzz among new and existing customers.

Digiday’s sibling publication Glossy found that 10 out of the 15 influencers included in Glossy’s 2024 Influencer Index posted about brand events on their Instagram accounts last year. On YouTube, three out of the 11 influencers with active YouTube channels posted videos about brand events in 2023. 

Posts featuring influencers getting ready for a brand event or posts made from the brand events themselves garnered significant attention from their audiences. On average, posts about brand events on Instagram had a higher engagement rate than all other types of sponsored posts — at 5.6% versus the average at 4.0%. The same results occurred on YouTube, where videos about brand events had a higher average engagement rate than other types of sponsored videos.