Events are back. 17 percent of B2B marketing budgets, level with 2019. (Forrester, 2025)
The proof is not. 86 percent of teams cannot attribute ROI to events. 98 percent say they struggle to justify event spend. 62 percent name ROI measurement as the biggest barrier to defending the budget. 90 percent say events influence deals that never receive CRM credit. (Vendelux 2026 survey; Forrester)
The gap is operational, not creative. 64 percent lack post-event sales visibility. 55 percent cannot attribute pipeline. 38 percent cite poor CRM integration. (Vendelux, 2026)
Set those against what happens when the wiring exists. 52 percent of marketers attribute at least half of their 2024 closed-won deals to events. Event-sourced leads convert opportunity to close at 40 percent. 72 percent of prospects close faster after attending. (HockeyStack via Vendelux)
Effectiveness is not the problem. Proof is.
Where the seat sits
Experiential agencies sell the room, the build and the moment. Very few sell the measurement plan, wired to the client's CRM before the doors open. The brand-side team rarely has it either, which is why 86 percent cannot produce the number when the CFO asks.
That is a hiring gap, and it is visible in the register. Postings for heads of experiential, event directors and producers vastly outnumber postings for event measurement, marketing operations with an event remit, or revenue attribution inside experiential agencies. The agencies that add that seat will be able to say what their competitors cannot: what the event returned.
What the buyer has to get right
The measurement plan is written before the event, not after. It names the CRM fields, the attribution window and the pipeline stage that counts.
The agency contract includes data handoff, not just deliverables.
The head of events is paired with a marketing operations owner, in-house or fractional, who owns the wiring.
This is AP's home market. The Pulse tracks experiential leadership moves, agency consolidation in the category, head-of-events compensation, and the count of measurement and operations seats inside experiential agencies. The last number is the one to watch.
The work
AP builds the measurement and operations seat inside experiential teams, permanent or fractional, and writes the plan that gets the event its pipeline credit.
Sources: Vendelux, Event Marketing Statistics 2026. Forrester, 2025 B2B budget data. HockeyStack via Vendelux.