Everyone wants their public events published on the local newspaper'w website and in the print edition. So, if you're trying to build a search engine for websites, you can scrape those sites or you can work with them. Zvents is working with them. A few weeks ago, they announced their partnership with the Palo Alto Daily News where Zvents is powering a web to print system where individuals can enter events for review by the editors of the paper to be printed in a special insert.

So, they are solving the chicken and egg problem that exists with every event directory: How to get the events into the system?

The next problem they have is figuring out how to make money. Advertising seems to be the way to do that. Since they know the locality of their visitors, local advertising becomes the most obvious. However, they are even narrowing their pitch to "event promoters":

Event Promoters - want more people to know about your event? Zvents can help get the word out by promoting your event as a Sponsored Event. Sponsored Events move your event to the top of the list! Choose keywords relevant to your event and target audience, and your event shows up as one of the top two results whenever a visitor searches those keywords.

How It Works:

Zvents targets ads based on keywords - the what, when, and where information visitors type in to find events. When a visitor searches for events, ads that are relevant based on these criteria are displayed next to their results.

For example, if a visitor searches for "Opera performance, next weekend, San Francisco", they will see opera events taking place next Friday, Saturday or Sunday within San Francisco. Your ad can be targeted based on any or all of these search terms, so a restaurant within 0.5 mile of the War Memorial Opera House can advertise "Dinner before the Opera" to visitors looking for opera events and only have the ad run on designated days.

Or maybe you are the event promoter for a small opera production...your event could be a Sponsored Event, and show up as one of the top search results, generating greater awareness among opera fans.

This approach is a revolutionary new way to market events. It enables event promoters to target potential attendees when they are looking for someting to do. Better yet, it targets the ad to the people in the right location looking for the an event like theirs. However, there's one missing component to make it a run away success.

Can you guess what that is?