Content has never been cheaper to make. Trust has never been more expensive to earn.
That is the tension running through The Trust Gap, new research from Cvent and Censuswide covering 901 marketers and event professionals across 12 countries. And the number that matters most is this one: 85% of respondents say the rise of AI-generated content has made it harder to build trust with their audiences.
Not harder to reach people. Harder to be believed by them.
What is going on
90% of organisations have increased their use of AI-generated content in the past year. 43% are already scaling it in audience-facing work. The volume has gone up, the cost has come down, and audiences have responded by getting sceptical. When asked what poses the greatest risk to audience trust today, the single biggest answer was generic or AI-generated content.
The interesting part is where organisations are putting their money in response. 84% say they have increased investment in in-person experiences over the past year, and they name trust-building as the reason. When asked where they would put extra budget if they had it, events came top of every channel.
They are voting with their feet, back into the room.
And here is the gap
81% of respondents say audience trust in their brand went up after an in-person event. So events work.
But only 28% have a robust framework in place to measure the impact of events on trust. A further 49% admit the framework they do have needs improving. Meanwhile 90% say their event programme is under heavy scrutiny to prove measurable return.
So the picture is a channel that demonstrably builds the thing everyone says they need, being asked to prove itself with tools most teams have not built yet. That is the trust gap, and it is not really about audiences at all. It is about the conversation between the events team and the CFO.
What we would do about it
Measure the soft thing properly. Trust feels unmeasurable, which is exactly why it goes unmeasured, and exactly why event budgets get argued over every year. Repeat attendance, referral rates, how many people in a closed deal had been in a room with you first: none of that is difficult to capture if the registration data is set up to capture it from the start.
Be honest about the AI. 96% of respondents agreed that transparency about AI use matters to maintaining trust. That is a rare level of agreement on anything.
And keep the human bit human. The research is blunt about where the line sits: AI is useful behind the scenes, as a matchmaker, a translator, a recommender. It is not useful standing on your stage.
In a market where anyone can generate a convincing-looking anything, the room is the one thing that cannot be faked.
The Trust Gap is research by Cvent and Censuswide. You can read the full report on Cvent’s site.
Building an event programme that earns trust and proves it? Let’s talk.