Presence: Attending An Event Is A Rare Signal, Cvent CEO Says

Cvent says presence is the new premium in an AI-flooded world. It just can't say what it's worth. What the events industry's big bet means for marketers.

In February 2021, at the height of the virtual-events boom, ON24 went public at more than $60 a share. The world was locked down. Conferences were on your laptop screen.

Webinar platforms looked like the future of the event business. Four years later, with people back in real rooms, event management firm Cvent bought ON24 for about $400 million, roughly $5 a share, an 89% collapse from its peak. Oddly, at least at first glance, the same company that bought the wreckage of the virtual-events bubble then built its entire new brand around the opposite idea: the value of showing up in person.

Cvent spent roughly $700 million in a single month at the end of 2025: Goldcast in mid-December for about $300 million, ON24 two weeks later for $400 million, clearly loading up on webinar and digital-engagement technology. Then, seven months later, it rebranded itself at its CONNECT conference around what it calls the Presence Premium: the idea that as AI makes content and outreach infinitely cheap to produce, the scarce and valuable thing becomes genuine human attention.

As Reggie Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of Cvent, puts it, "In an age where AI can generate almost anything, presence is becoming one of the rarest signals in business." So which is it? Is the future digital, or is physical presence?

I put a version of that question to Cvent, and the answer they gave explained the apparent contradiction. What Showing Up at an Event Actually Costs Tell someone six weeks out that they need to carve two full days out of the workweek for something outside their day-to-day priorities, Cvent's team said, and most will tell you they simply can't. And yet, when an event feels important enough, they somehow make the time, book the flights, spend the money, and show up.

That act of showing up is the signal. It's a signal precisely because it's expensive. That angle on physical presence changes the long-running in-person-versus-virtual debate.

The format isn't the point. The point is the price of admission. That price goes well beyond the ticket.

It includes the hours, the travel, the calendar space, the opportunity cost of not doing the other twelve things on the list. When someone pays that, they've told you and, more importantly, told themselves, that this mattered. For event organizers, this means every event you run is a bill you hand your attendee.

And far too few ask the most important question before sending it: have I earned the right to charge this much? A two-day user conference is a large invoice. A 45-minute live webinar that demands active participation is a smaller one, but it's not zero.

For a busy executive it may actually cost more than the conference she was going to attend anyway. Presence isn't a format you select from a menu. It's a price you set.

And most events set it without ever estimating the number.