Separate participation from deeper outcomes
Measure participation, time spent and conversations separately rather than treating engagement as a single result. For botim money at GITEX GLOBAL, three touchscreen games let visitors explore how the app helps people earn, grow and manage their money. The experience attracted 1,883 players across the week-long exhibition, with an average play time of 2m 51s. Player numbers describe the scale of participation; average play time describes how long people stayed with the game and its story.
For G42, the immersive Intelligence Grid visualisation presented the group's vision of AI as a superutility. At GITEX GLOBAL, the experience stimulated hundreds of conversations with delegates, providing a different measure: dialogue prompted by the experience.
Use each measure for the question it can answer. Participation, duration and conversations are concrete engagement indicators, but none alone establishes what visitors understood or whether the experience generated commercial return.
Sources: Why it pays to play in B2B, A new chapter – and a new Frameworker