What it actually decides.
A teleprompter puts text on a monitor and reflects it off a sheet of angled glass. The speaker sees the words; the audience or the camera sees through the glass and sees the speaker.
Two arrangements cover most events. A presidential prompter uses two glass panels on stands flanking the lectern, so a speaker can work the room left and right while reading — the arrangement familiar from political addresses. An on-camera prompter mounts the glass directly in front of the lens, which is what makes a piece to camera feel like eye contact.
The part people underestimate is the operator. A prompter does not scroll at a set speed; an operator follows the speaker, matching their pace, holding when they go off script and finding the place again when they come back. Set it to auto-scroll and the speaker ends up chasing the text, which is visible from the back of the room.
Scripts also need to arrive early enough to be loaded and formatted, and a rehearsal pass is the difference between a speaker who reads and a speaker who appears not to be reading at all.
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Corporate event production — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.