For media companies, the relationship with an audience rarely stops at the page. Clarion Events — one of the world’s largest event organizers, and a media business in its own right — knew this better than most. Their events were generating thousands of meaningful interactions every day: booth scans, conversations, session attendance, sponsor engagements. But when the show floor closed, most of that signal disappeared.
The problem wasn’t a lack of data. It was a lack of connection. Live event engagement lived in one place. Audience profiles, newsletter behavior, website activity, and demographic history lived in Omeda. The two worlds never talked — which meant exhibitors were flying blind on ROI, follow-up was delayed, and Clarion was leaving meaningful revenue on the table.
“We’re able to provide deeper insights into intent funnels based on these layers of interactions,” said Tonya McCarthy, Senior Product Owner, Media & Subscriptions at Clarion Events. “Game changer in intent.”
The Gap Between a Badge Scan and a Buyer Signal
Traditional badge scanning at events captures a name and a company. That’s useful, but it’s a thin slice. It tells an exhibitor who stopped by — not whether that person has been reading their sponsored content for six months, researching relevant topics on the website, or engaging with webinars in the weeks before the show.
Without that context, exhibitors struggle to prioritize leads, measure ROI across channels, or make a case for returning next year. For Clarion, that gap had a direct cost: lead retrieval revenue was flowing to third-party vendors who owned the scanning infrastructure — and the data that came with it.
The opportunity was clear. Clarion already had a rich first-party audience profile for most of their attendees, sitting in Omeda. If they could connect live event engagement to that profile in real time, a badge scan wouldn’t just be a contact — it would be a signal in context.
Two Layers, One Unified Picture
Rather than patching the existing system, Clarion built something new: Converge+, an in-house event lead capture platform designed from the ground up to pair with Omeda as the intelligence and activation layer behind it.
The architecture is straightforward but powerful. Converge+ handles what happens on the show floor — badge and business card scanning, AI-generated conversation summaries, voice capture with consent, and immediate lead access during the event. Omeda handles everything underneath: verified audience profiles, engagement history across magazines, newsletters, webinars, and sponsored email, website behavioral tracking, and automated follow-up workflows.
Together, they turn a moment of in-person connection into a longitudinal audience record. An exhibitor doesn’t just see that someone scanned their badge — they see that same person’s content engagement history, ad click behavior, and demographic profile, all surfaced through Omeda’s first-party data layer. Intent isn’t inferred from a single touchpoint. It’s built from a year’s worth of signals.
The Results: A New Revenue Model
The early numbers validate the approach. Across eight live events and more than 1,600 scan licenses sold, Converge+ logged over 65,000 badge scans, nearly 20,000 captured notes, and more than 1,600 attendee chats. Total revenue grew 5x in year one.
5x
Revenue growth
65k
Badge scans
1600
Scan licenses sold
But the more significant shift is structural. Revenue that previously flowed to third-party lead retrieval vendors now stays with Clarion — and it comes with data ownership that those vendors never provided. What was once a pass-through expense has become a scalable, subscription-style revenue stream, powered by the audience intelligence already living in Omeda.
For media companies thinking about how to monetize the full arc of their audience relationships — not just the moments when someone opens an email or clicks an article — Clarion’s model is worth paying attention to. The event is a touchpoint. Omeda is the thread that runs through all of them.
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