LAS VEGAS — Clarion Events North America is transforming MAU Vegas, a mobile app AdTech and MarTech conference, and driving up attendance and NPS with “connection by design” and festivalization.
The event’s 2025 edition took place in the spring at the MGM Grand Conference Center and it is set for May 19-21 in 2026.
“We had new leadership on the team and brought in new team members who weren’t bound by the mantra ‘that’s the way we do it,’” Angela Harar, Vice President, Strategy & Growth, MAU Vegas, said. “We listened to our audience. For the immediate months following last year’s show, we set aside time to study our data and then couple it with hundreds of conversations. I like to say data gives you the ‘what,’ but people give you the ‘why.’”
Wheels Up
MAU Vegas 2025 had a hub-and-spoke expo floor with activations anchoring the middle, sides and back. Its show floor’s long aisles allowed attendees to see activations in every direction.
The event featured new connection formats such as an Executive Summit, which was closed-door and for senior leaders.
It also offered:
- A MAU Plaza that hosted role-based meetups and tactical eight-minute Mic Drop talks
- Founders House, a non-pitch space for founders and indie developers
- A 1:1 Education Meeting Zone for pre-conference-day meetings
More new formats for networking included a runners’ club and an outdoor yoga session with a wellness roundtable.
Additionally, MAU Vegas 2025 allowed attendees to book meetings in poolside cabanas and its headquarter hotel’s luxury suites, providing the chance for conversations in elevated spaces.
Clarion balanced their conference schedule to allow time for these enhanced networking options.
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Proven Impact
“Post-show, we used Power BI [a business analytics platform] to visually measure and review what mattered: pre-scheduled meetings, breaking down who schedules meetings with who based on title and badge type,” Harar explained. “We review session participation, retention, show scores and more. After reviewing the data, I layer in follow-up conversations. Beyond calls with key customers and attendees, I also schedule random check-ins to hear what keeps people up at night — where we delivered and where we can do better.”
Harar shared that these changes helped lead to a 27% increase in attendance and a 7% increase in NPS.
“It increased quality time between buyers and solution providers, kept foot-traffic distributed across the expo all day and brought FOMO moments shared across social media, which we tracked on a social wall displayed online and on onsite digital signage,” Harar said.
Advice and Looking Ahead
For show organizers who want to introduce festival components, Harar advised to avoid over-lengthy sessions, poor wayfinding, music so loud that conversations die, over-pitchy environments, bottlenecks and unbalanced schedules that empty the floor.
“Pick three to five formats and do them exceptionally well,” Harar explained. “I’m greatly looking forward to 2026 and beyond. We’re going to continue to push the limits of crowdsourced connection opportunities and how to further lean into a festival experience.”
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