Speakers

Jon Benjamin is CEO of ASP, the industry’s leading experts in event websites. Before joining ASP he held director-level roles at LinkedIn and News UK, giving him a background spanning commercial media, digital marketing and enterprise sales. He joined ASP in 2014 and became CEO in 2023, since then the business has grown its client base to over 130 event organisations across the UK, US and Middle East, achieved an NPS of +69 and won Supplier of the Year at the AEO Awards in both 2023 and 2024.

Jon's focus at AEV 2026 is how AI is reshaping the way people find and choose events. According to Search Engine Land, 37% of consumers now start their searches with AI rather than a traditional search engine, and Semrush reports that 93% of Google AI Mode sessions end without a website visit at all. For venues, organisers and suppliers, that means the old rules of visibility no longer apply. If AI cannot find and understand what your website says, it cannot recommend you, and the discovery journey ends before a person is ever involved.

Jon's view is that this makes the human advantage sharper, not smaller. Technology decides who gets seen; people still decide who gets chosen. On the panel, Jon will bring both the organiser and supplier lens to how AI-driven discovery is changing the commercial reality behind event technology decisions, what that shift looks like in practice, and what venues and organisers should be doing about it now rather than waiting to react.