Publishers' events businesses have been a bright spot in an otherwise grim economic climate. While trade publishers and consumer publishers have different approaches to how events fit in their portfolios, both are benefiting from advertisers wanting face-to-face impressions with prospective customers.

VentureBeat’s total revenue increased by 50% year over year from 2021 to 2022. And despite having an events business for more than 15 years, the company’s events revenue increased by about 100% during that same time period, said Gina Joseph, the company’s newly appointed chief strategy officer, who was promoted last month, though she did not provide exact figures.

In Joseph's five years at VentureBeat, she implemented VB Lab, a structure for how the company’s sales team custom would build campaigns for each individual advertiser. During the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, she discussed how VB Lab’s impacted VentureBeat’s bottom line in the four-and-a-half years since its launch, as well as how her appointment to CSO marks DE&I history in the publishing industry.