CHICAGO — The Consumer Technology Association(CTA) CES 2024which took place January 9-12 in Las Vegas, was 15% larger than CES 2023, with more than 2.5 million net square feet of exhibition space, more than 4,300 exhibitors and more than 135,000 attendees.
The CTA follows UFI — the global association of the exhibition industryUFI’s guidelines for auditing its annual trade show. By working with a third-party auditor, CTA is able to confidently report its numbers and apply to become a UFI-approved international event.
“Independent audits provide reassurance to our exhibitors and their marketing directors, who expect hard numbers to justify their marketing investments,” said Gary Shapiro, CTA president and CEO. “Trade show organizers compete for marketing dollars by targeting social media spend, activations and other forms of advertising, and exhibitors want to see measurable financial results for their investment. Conducting an independent audit easily pays for itself because it produces reliable data that helps justify an exhibitor’s investment.”
Trade Fair Manager I spoke with the CTA team to get a first-hand look at the audit process.
CES Audit Process
The first step in the audit process begins before the show begins with a systems assessment. During this step, the auditor will review the registrations received to see if the CTA captures the data it says it does using its “master screening spreadsheet,” which is a spreadsheet that describes every question, pop-up, and payment option.
Next, the CTA shares a list of exhibitors with the auditor closer to the show opening to provide an up-to-date list of companies to choose from. During the show, the audit team will randomly select approximately 100 exhibitors and verify the overall square footage and total number of exhibitors.
The auditor checks that the exhibitor is present, in the correct stand or suite and that it bears the expected or contractual name. He also checks the approximate dimensions of the space.
“Also, they want to make sure that we count ‘direct exhibitors,’ meaning we don’t include illegal acts or other exhibiting companies that aren’t in the contractual agreement,” said Adrienne Whitestone, CES’s chief operating officer.
Once the broadcast is complete, the CTA team begins its internal data cleaning process.
The Art of Data Cleaning
“We look at approved media onsite, duplicates, students, total number of speakers and any speaker changes that may have occurred onsite,” Whitestone said. “We look for any kind of anomalies in the onsite data that we can find. We work closely with the data team and the conferences to make sure the data we are giving to our listener is as accurate as possible.”
The CTA team said duplicates are the biggest problem they face with over 135,000 participants.
Once the data is cleaned, team members will run the same basic numbers for total participation, total international participation, and total industry participation, among others. Once each team member has returned the same results, the audit will continue.
CES 2024 Prepares to Welcome 130,000 Attendees and Create Seamless Experiences
“Auditors create their own queries based on the documentation provided in the master filter file,” Whitestone said. “They double-check that our documentation matches what they see in the database using the field names from the backend on the master filter to make sure everything is, what I call, consistent.”
To examine total participation, the auditor will take a sample from each group and begin asking registrants to confirm their attendance and some details of their registration. Once the sample size can confirm statistical significance, the auditor will conduct their own checks to look for any red flags that could impact the final figures.
Once the information is finalized, the auditor will execute the audit report and share the first draft of the report with the CTA for review.
“We generally look for additional anomalies: numbers that don’t add up or make sense, countries represented that we don’t normally see, and overall we make sure the report is clear, easy to read and, most importantly, accurate,” Whitestone said.
Once the CTA has finalized the report, auditors will complete the official application form to become a UFI-endorsed international event.
Benefits
Through its audit process, CES is a UFI-approved international event, meaning that international visitors must make up at least 5% of total visitors or that direct foreign exhibitors and multinational exhibits must make up at least 10% of total exhibitors. Whitestone says CES aims to meet the standard that multinational exhibits must make up at least 10% of exhibitors because that data is readily available from their audit.
The UFI Approved Event label serves as the “global seal of authority for high-quality exhibitions,” helping to increase confidence in the show as a place to do business.
The data collected through the formal audit process also provides the marketing team with the opportunity to create a more robust audit that includes media reach and show highlights, and this broader audit can be used as a sales tool.
Contact Gary Shapiro at gshapiro@cta.tech