We’ve spent a bit of time recently talking about the concept of distributed commerce, which allows consumers to buy tickets wherever they discover your event. You might also be interested to know how distributed commerce can transform your marketing approach. (See our introduction to this topic here.)
The truth is, distributed commerce isn’t new — it’s been evolving for a long time, and many technological advancements have made it all possible.
To get the full story, we spoke to Pat Poels, the VP of Engineering at Eventbrite, who’s been in the ticketing industry — and seen it evolve firsthand — for over 30 years.
What did “distributed commerce” mean when you joined Ticketmaster in 1989? What does it mean now?
When I was at Ticketmaster in the late 80s, people used to line up at the box office to get tickets. After that, the industry shifted to a physical distributed commerce model. You could buy tickets at record stores, or at venues — all physical locations. Then, ticketing moved online and became somewhat concentrated again: tickets were all bought through specific transaction hubs.
Now, we’re seeing a new model of distributed commerce emerge online. This is similar to the physical “expansion” we saw in the late 80s: people will be able to buy tickets wherever they go online. So instead of distributing ticket-buying across physical locations people frequent, we’re distributing ticket-buying across digital locations.
Looking back, what do you see as the most impactful change in the way events are ticketed?
Definitely advancements in mobile. Attendees can buy and keep tickets on their phones, and organisers can sell tickets and track sales from their phones. This will continue to evolve. At Eventbrite, we’ve found that staying ahead of mobile trends means rethinking the way products are built.
When it first became evident that mobile adoption would continue to grow at unprecedented rates, we started to make some big shifts in how we approached product development for mobile. Instead of thinking about how we could build a desktop experience and adapt it to mobile, we approached solutions with a mobile-first mentality. The companies that approached product development in this way emerged as the leaders in their respective industries, and we were proud to be the leader in mobile for the ticketing industry.
What’s the biggest problem that distributed commerce solves for organisers?
The biggest benefit of distributed commerce for organisers is incremental ticket sales. It’s one thing to get in front of people who were already going to buy tickets and making that process easier. Distributed commerce actually takes that a step further — it makes it possible to get your event in front of new people, who wouldn’t have known about your event otherwise.
As we build and improve our product for organisers, how does distributed commerce inform Eventbrite’s strategy?
Our vision is to have a product that anyone can easily build on so that we can give our customers the best experience possible. Distributed commerce wouldn’t be possible if we hadn’t built the hooks for mobile applications and API-driven transactions.
Eventbrite’s open API allows partners like MailChimp or SurveyMonkey to build on top of our product so we can offer organisers best-in-class extensions. This openness is what has allowed us to continue to innovate with initiatives like distributed commerce.
Essentially, we embrace partnerships that give our organisers the best tools out there for growing their businesses and that make it as easy as possible for attendees to buy tickets. When it comes to distributed commerce, this means helping organisers gain incremental ticket sales by keeping their customer right where they are — from discovery through purchase.
How did the partnership with Facebook evolve?
We’ve been working closely with Facebook since 2008. In fact, we were the first partner of theirs to integrate with Facebook Events. There are over a billion people on the platform, so there is huge potential for organisers to reach new audiences.
Like Eventbrite, Facebook is a very consumer-centric and mobile-first platform. When we first launched our partnership with them, we agreed to create a simplified version of our product. We wanted to make the experience as easy as possible for the buyer within the environment where they’re discovering events.
This integration encouraged us to think more about the consumer experience first: how can we make their purchase experience as painless as possible? Of course, by answering this question, we were able to craft a checkout process that ultimately benefits the organiser with more incremental ticket sales.
The Facebook team understands the incredible power and potential of live events, so it was a no-brainer for our partnership to evolve into distributed commerce.
Ten years from now, what do you imagine this process to be like?
Ten years from now, I hope that Eventbrite will be recognised as a trusted source — that when you see “powered by Eventbrite,” whether it’s on Eventbrite.co.uk or elsewhere, you know it’s a both a safe and easy transaction. We’ll still have that central repository of events — the place to go when you’re looking for something to do — but we’ll also be everywhere else. And anywhere someone sees an Eventbrite event, they’ll automatically associate it with being trustworthy.
To learn more about distributed commerce, check out our interview with Eventbrite’s CEO and Co-Founder, Julia Hartz.
