Not knowing where conversions come from is guessing, not marketing

Remember the good old days when event marketing was straightforward? We bought Google Ads, maybe some Facebook campaigns, watched our Google Analytics dashboard, and called it a day. Our registration numbers went up when we spent more, down when we spent less. Simple. Predictable. And increasingly, completely obsolete.

Last week, I installed a new browser that fundamentally changed how I think about the future of event marketing. Not because it was faster or prettier, but because it made me realize that the entire foundation of digital marketing - the one we've built our strategies on for two decades - is about to crumble. And if you're still planning your 2025 event marketing the same way you did in 2023, I am sorry to spill the bad news, but you're already behind.

The Browser That Broke the Internet Marketing

Let me paint you a picture of what just happened. Perplexity, the AI company, launched a browser called Comet. And it's not just another Chrome competitor: this browser doesn't show search results.

When I search for something, Perplexity AI gives me an answer. Not a summary of the search results, like Google and Bing are doing now - with Comet, there are simply no results at all, just an AI answer. That answer might contain a few links, but they are curated by the AI. No sponsored links. No display ads. Nothing that we, as an event marketer, have paid Google to show our potential attendees.

There's more to it. It blocks every single ad on every website I visit. Our carefully crafted banner on that industry publication? Gone. Our retargeting pixel following attendees around the internet? Gone, too.

"But surely," you might say, "this is just another tech experiment that five nerds will use."

That's exactly what Microsoft said about Google Chrome in 2008, back when Internet Explorer was the unchallenged king of browsers. And then, within three years, Chrome went from zero to 65% market share, fundamentally changing how we access the internet.

Chrome's killer feature? It made search easier.

Comet's killer feature? It makes search obsolete.

The thing with Comet is: it's convenient, way too convenient. Once people experience the intelligence they know from ChatGPT baked directly into their browser, paired with web browsing without ads, without cookie banners, without sponsored content cluttering their search for information - do you really think they'll go back?

Event marketers are about to face a perfect storm. On one side, browsers like Comet are making traditional digital advertising invisible, and more AI companies will inevitably follow with their own browsers. On the other, we are already seeing how Apple's privacy changes have crippled social media targeting, how GDPR and other privacy regulations keep tightening, and how younger attendees have migrated to platforms where we're maybe not even advertising.

Stop Throwing Money at Strangers

I've lost count of how many event marketers have told me the same story: "We just need to increase the budget."

Their registrations? Flat. Their cost per acquisition? Sky-high. Their solution? Spend more.

It's insanity - but an understandable one. When we can't see what's working, the only lever left is pouring in more money. It's like trying to hit a target in a pitch-black room by firing more bullets. Eventually, we might hit something, but at what cost?

So where does this leave event marketers? Well, it leaves them in the most exciting position they've been in for twenty years.

The Registration is the Only Truth That Matters

For the first time in twenty years, creativity and marketing skill matter more than budget size. The "whoever spends the most on Google Ads wins" era? Over. What's replacing it is far more powerful: precision marketing driven by AI.

And, event organizers have always had one metric that trumps all others: registrations. Unlike any other number in our marketing stack, registration data doesn't lie. Ever.

Google Analytics shows visits, but not sign-ups. Facebook tells us our ad reached 10,000 "interested in tech conferences" people, but not if any of them bought tickets. Our registration system, however, knows exactly who registered and when.

Now we just need to figure out why.

And, in order to figure that out, we need precise attribution, not the fuzzy "assisted conversions" that Google Analytics tries to sell us. We need real, concrete data. For each registration, we need to know if it came through an external referrer - and exactly what that referrer was. Was it a specific blog post? A LinkedIn discussion? A newsletter mention? Without this clarity, we're flying blind. Modern event management platforms like run.events have this baked in - every registration comes with a clear reference trail. This enormously helps us understand our audience, not through demographic guesses but through actual behavior.

Once we have clean attribution data, then we can have AI transform it into actionable intelligence. And this happens in two powerful ways.

First, AI helps us understand why something worked. It can analyze the language patterns in high-performing social posts and emails versus low-performing ones. Did casual tone outperform formal language? Did urgency drive conversions or kill them? We get a clean, unvarnished picture of our marketing efforts' real results.

Second - and this is where it gets really exciting - AI helps us spread the net intelligently. By analyzing the efficiency of our existing marketing channels, it doesn't just tell you to "do more of what works." It helps us find similar channels we might not even know exist. AI can identify communities where our audience might gather. If one newsletter delivers results, it can help us find comparable publications. It's like having a marketing scout that never sleeps, constantly searching for new places where our people actually are.

What we are talking about here is marketing with the lights on. And that's the way to win in the post-Google Ads era.

The Human Touch in an AI World

AI isn't replacing marketers, it's replacing guesswork. And that's a massive difference that will fundamentally change what marketers consider important and how they work.

We know our event's unique value proposition. We understand our community's culture. We can craft a message that resonates emotionally with our audience. AI can't do any of that. What AI can do is tell us where to deliver that message, when to deliver it, and which version of it works best.

Think of AI as the world's best marketing assistant. It handles the analysis, the optimization, the tracking - all the tedious stuff that takes hours but doesn't actually require creativity. This frees us to do what we humans do best: tell stories, sell out events.

The event marketers who will thrive in this new world are those who embrace this partnership. They'll use AI to understand their audience's behavior, then use human creativity to influence it. They'll let AI handle the number-crunching while they focus on the story-telling.

All of this is happening right now

I'm not usually one for doomsday predictions, but the writing isn't just on the wall - it's in neon lights with arrows pointing at it. The shift isn't coming, it's already here. Events that embrace it will grow. Those that don't will keep wondering why registrations stall even as marketing spend rises.

The good news? We don't need to wait, or be data scientists. Platforms like run.events already bake attribution tracking into registration systems and layer AI-driven analytics on top. They help us understand our audience like never before and make decisions based on data, not hunches. When Google Ads are blocked, when AI replaces search results, and when privacy rules kill targeting, this data becomes our best friend for building direct relationships with our audience.

This is the difference between guessing and marketing. Guessing is hoping our message reaches the right people. Marketing is knowing it did. In the past, we had to guess because the tools didn't exist to know. Today, those tools not only exist - they're accessible, affordable, and absolutely essential.

Standing still isn't an option. The market is moving whether we are or not. The only question is whether we'll lead that movement or be dragged along by it.