Audience quality score

Exhibitors don't pay for footfall; they pay for the possibility of business, and audience quality score is an attempt to measure that possibility honestly. In practice, organizers build the score from registration data — role, seniority, purchasing responsibility, budget band, product interests — sometimes weighted by demonstrated behaviour like meetings booked or intent signals. The composite then tracks edition over edition: attendance up 15% with quality flat is genuinely good news, while attendance up 15% with quality down 20% means you rented a crowd. Commercially, a credible quality score changes the sales conversation from defending headcount to selling fit, and it disciplines marketing: campaigns get judged on the quality of registrants they produce, not the volume. The common mistake is building the score once, in a spreadsheet, with weights nobody can justify, then quoting it as if it were an industry standard. It's your metric; its value is internal consistency, so document the formula and freeze it between editions or the trend becomes meaningless. One honest nuance: quality scores run on self-reported registration data, and people inflate their seniority and purchasing role on forms. Verified behaviour — meetings held, follow-ups requested — is slower to collect but far harder to flatter.