• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 31, 2003

ZDNet, which began shaking up the burgeoning field of Webcast marketing with a shift from advertorials to pure editorial programming, is poised to shake the field up again, this time taking the online medium into the most off-line of places: live audience events.

ZDNet, a leader in online editorial content aimed at IT professionals and business influencers, today will announce it is taking its top editors on the road to stage a series of town hall-like news events that will be Webcasted to an even broader online audience.

The strategy serves two purposes. First, it creates a live, dynamic element for programming its editorial Webcasts, which already are regarded as some of the best and most objective ones aimed at IT professionals. Secondly, the live events will serve as a new forum for technology marketers to get some personal face time with from 60 to 2,000 of their most valued customers in a neutral editorial environment addressing vital tech industry issues.

The prototype for the series, a summit of 70 senior IT professionals who were gathered Sept. 24 by ZDNet's editors to discuss cyber security, was dubbed the Digital Defense Test 2003. It was sponsored by online security marketer VeriSign, which got to interact directly with top customers during the live event, but which also generated contact with more than 2,000 ZDNet online audience members that registered to view a Webcast of the event in the weeks that followed.

"VeriSign could have done the event on its own, and invited the same panelists, but it wouldn't have had the editorial quality or objectivity that you get from being involved with folks who are professionals," gushed Stratton Sclavos, chairman and chief executive officer of VeriSign.

In fact, it is the editorial imprimatur that has made ZDNet's Webcasts so successful for many tech marketers and, which parent CNET Networks says will make this new live event marketing strategy so appealing to others.

"They're coming into the tent because they trust CNET and our editorial credibility," explains Chas Edwards, vice president-Webcasting at CNET Networks, "and then we ask them if they'd like to speak to our marketing partners."

It is that credibility Edwards says differentiated CNET from other leading technology Webcasters in the view of both IT professionals, as well as marketers trying to reach them. Many of its competitors, including IDG World, CMP, TechTarget and Ziff Davis Media (which is not related to ZDNet), still produce and Webcast various forms of advertorials that are built specifically around marketers products and services, as opposed to developing an integral editorial idea, producing and scheduling it and then pitching sponsors to come in.

Credibility aside, the ZDNet editors found the live events provided a new dynamic and elevated the quality of their Webcasts. Among other things, audience members interact directly with the panel via a real-time polling device that can influence the direction of the discussion.

While the events are by no means cheap to sponsor - sponsorships range from $85,000 for a 60-person event to $225,000 for a 2,000-person event - they are much more cost effective than other forms of direct selling. CNET's Edwards eschews CPM advertising models, but he said these Webcasts translate into a cost-per-person of "about 125."

"If you looked at it on a CPM basis, it would be very high. The metric we are using is, what is it going to cost a marketer to have contact with an engaged IT buyer and to get their permission to stay in touch with them," says Edwards. Edwards estimates it would cost technology marketers between $250 and $500 per person, if they were to stage a live event themselves. But even then, the event would not include the follow-up Webcast, which could reach thousands more prospects vicariously.