Press release
7 October 2026
Grip, the AI-powered event technology platform used by leading event organizers, today launches Audience Campaigns. The new product, already in use at events like Yotta, lets commercial event organizers sell sponsors and exhibitors targeted access to their event audience without ever sharing the attendee list.
Sponsors search an anonymized participant list, assemble lists of the buyers they want to reach, and send email campaigns the organizer approves before anything goes out, with names and contact details hidden throughout. Volume is metered by a credit system the organizer sets and prices, giving organizers a new revenue stream from first-party data they already own. This lets them say yes to a request they have had to decline for years.
That request is familiar to every organizer. A sponsor has booked a private dinner, a roundtable or a sponsored session and needs the right forty people in the room, so they ask for the registration list. The organizer has to decline, because the list is the business and data protection law is unambiguous about sharing it. The sponsor falls back on generic promotion, the room fills with whoever saw a push notification, and the activation they paid for underdelivers.
The cost of that lands on the revenue organizers depend on most. CEIR puts average exhibitor retention at 62%, and only 44% of first-time exhibitors return for a second edition, according to Lippman Connects. The pressure behind those figures is financial: 80% of exhibitors name cost management their single biggest challenge and 55% say rising costs now outweigh the value they get at some events1. A sponsor who can prove the meetings happened renews. A sponsor who spent the budget and cannot point to the pipeline could churn.
"Many organizers I speak to have had that conversation with a sponsor at least once," said Tim Groot, CEO and Founder of Grip. "The sponsor wants the right people at their dinner, they ask for the list, and the organizer has to say no. Both sides lose, and the meetings that would have made the show worth attending never happen. Audience Campaigns lets organizers provide the value that sponsors want in a secure and scalable way."
Event registration produces verified job titles, company names, seniority, buying interests, session choices and meeting history, refreshed every cycle and volunteered by the participant. In a market where third-party targeting has been dismantled, that is the most valuable audience data in B2B, and it is held by the one party contractually unable to act on it.
Demand for it is already proven. Exhibitions absorb 40.8% of exhibitors' total marketing budgets and 75% of exhibitors invest in digital channels alongside their booth, according to CEIR's 2026 Marketing Spend Decision Report. Exhibitors are spending on reach. Previously, the industry had limited infrastructure to sell it to them safely, so every approach became a conversation about data protection.
"Event organizers are sitting on the best first-party data in B2B marketing," said Tim. "Media owners worked out how to sell audience access a decade ago. Events have an audience that is well qualified and often hard to reach. Giving organizers real infrastructure to give sponsors access to it changes what a sponsorship package can be, and it turns the audience into an asset that earns real revenue."
Audience Campaigns is built to be packaged and priced. Organizers are selling it three ways:
Sponsors track delivery, views, clicks and conversion on every campaign, so the next one is better targeted and the renewal conversation starts with numbers.
Organizers get intelligence of their own. Because every list is built inside Grip, they can see which participants companies are competing to reach, producing a live demand map of their audience: which job titles are being chased, which buyers are wanted for roundtables, which VIPs are in demand across multiple sponsors. Those insights can help price next year's inventory, understand which formats work and who are the real VIPs you need in the room.
Yotta, the event uniting the digital infrastructure ecosystem behind the AI economy, uses the capability at its events in Las Vegas. Sponsors filtered the audience by company and job title and each sent 100 verified invitations to their own breakfasts, lunches and private dinners, with all personal details hidden. Yotta monetized its audience while keeping the delegate list intact. The show grew sponsors and exhibitors from 101 to 177 in a year and half of them rebooked on site, against a 40% target.
"We use Audience Campaigns to boost attendance for our curated breakfast sessions, lunch sessions and private dinners, which were a massive success," said Chiyon Yoon, Sponsor Logistics Manager at Yotta. "Providing sponsors with a secure way to invite their own prospects was a major value-add."
Audience Campaigns is in early access and is being made available to select customers using Grip Manage. Organizers configure campaign options in Grip Manage, setting which profile fields are visible, credit limits and whether campaigns need approval before sending. They then package and price campaigns, assign them to companies, invite those companies into the Company Portal, and review submissions before they send.
To learn more, visit: https://www.grip.events/products/manage#Audience-campaigns
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1 The Exhibitor Advocate's 2025 survey of 224 exhibitor manuals across 23 US cities.
Grip is the AI-powered event technology platform built for engagement. The flexible system helps commercial event organizers like Ascential, Hyve, Emerald and Clarion Events boost revenue by establishing, maintaining and tracking relationships between participants over multiple events. This is possible because Grip goes beyond networking. It combines AI and billions of platform interactions with a powerful event management system, seamless registration, an award-winning mobile event app and an AI Assistant, so participants meet the right people at the right time. Grip also offers organizers flexibility: they can use all the features Grip offers or integrate Grip with their existing event tech stack. While the Grip MCP connects organizers' AI applications like Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot directly to live event platform data. This flexible approach results in organizers benefiting from better event satisfaction scores, increased growth and, ultimately, higher revenues.
