Trade Show Exhibitor Scraper: First-Time & Lapsed

Trade Show Exhibitor Scraper is an Apify Actor by Sullivan Ventures that exports a trade show's public exhibitor list (Map Your Show, a2z or plain HTML) and flags first-time exhibitors with a high, medium or low confidence level, lapsed exhibitors from last year, and organizer badges like Startup and New Products. It's built for booth builders, promo-product sellers and event agencies who want to reach new exhibitors before they choose vendors.

Turn any trade show's exhibitor directory into a lead list that tells you who is new, who dropped out, and who is spending:

• First-time exhibitors with a confidence level. Two sources: the organizer's own "First Time Exhibitor" badge and a year-over-year comparison with last year's list. Each row says high, medium or low, so you can call the sure ones first.
• Startup and new-product badges. Map Your Show organizers tag exhibitors as Startup, Offering New Products, association members and featured (paid) listings. Other scrapers throw these away; this one keeps them.
• Lapsed exhibitors. Companies that were at last year's show but are not on this year's list: a ready win-back list.
• Plus the basics: company, booth, website, category, city, state, country, sponsor-only flag. CSV, Excel or JSON.

Who uses it

You sell...	Use it to...
Booth design, rentals, graphics, printing	Reach first-time exhibitors before they pick a vendor; win back lapsed ones
Promo products, giveaways, booth staffing, AV, lead retrieval, shipping, hotels	Target startups and first-timers who have budget but no habits yet
Event / exhibit marketing agency services	Find featured-listing and new-product exhibitors who are actively spending
B2B software or services (sales teams)	Book pre-show meetings with the right booths, with booth numbers in your email

Real numbers from test runs

• NAB Show 2026: 1,127 exhibitors; the organizer badges 212 as First Time Exhibitor, 152 Offering New Products, 33 Startup, 150 featured listings.
• PACK EXPO International 2026 vs 2024: 2,716 exhibitors, 956 not at the 2024 show (live lists on both years, so high confidence), and 929 lapsed 2024 exhibitors.

Why first-time exhibitors?

First-time exhibitors are the warmest leads at any show. They have new budgets, no booth vendor yet, no favorite hotel block, no freight company, no lead-retrieval habit. Organizers rarely publish the list. This Actor builds it for you.

Quick start

1. Paste the show's exhibitor list link (for Map Your Show it ends in /8_0/explore/exhibitor-gallery.cfm).
2. Optional but recommended: paste last year's link in Last year's directory URLs (for Map Your Show, usually the same link with last year's 2 digits, e.g. packexpo24 instead of packexpo26).
3. Run. Filter the table by first_time_confidence, startup or new_products. Get lapsed exhibitors from the Storage tab (LAPSED_CSV).

Supported directories

Platform	Example link	What you get
Map Your Show	https://packexpo26.mapyourshow.com/8_0/explore/exhibitor-gallery.cfm	Company, booth, description. With "Include details": website, city, state, country, product categories (when the show makes them public).
a2z / Personify	https://hd.a2zinc.net/HDExpo2026/Public/Exhibitors.aspx	Company, booth, profile link.
Any HTML list	any page	Whatever your CSS selectors point at (name, booth, website, category, location), with next-page support.

Input example

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://packexpo26.mapyourshow.com/8_0/explore/exhibitor-gallery.cfm" }],
  "previousYearUrls": [{ "url": "https://packexpo24.mapyourshow.com/8_0/explore/exhibitor-gallery.cfm" }],
  "onlyFirstTime": true,
  "includeLapsed": true,
  "includeDetails": false
}

Real result for this input: 2,716 exhibitors at PACK EXPO International 2026, 956 of them not at the 2024 show, and 929 lapsed 2024 exhibitors.

Output example

{
  "company": "16x9, Inc.",
  "booth": "C8040",
  "website": "https://www.16x9inc.com",
  "category": "Audio Production, Processing and Networking; Cameras, Camera Support Control and Accessories; Lighting and Grip",
  "city": "Burbank",
  "state": "California",
  "country": "United States",
  "show": "2026 NAB Show",
  "year": 2026,
  "is_first_time": false,
  "first_time_source": null,
  "first_time_confidence": null,
  "exhibitor_status": "returning",
  "organizer_first_time": false,
  "first_time_by_comparison": null,
  "organizer_badges": ["NAB Associate Member"],
  "startup": false,
  "new_products": false,
  "featured_listing": false,
  "sponsor_only": false,
  "platform": "mapyourshow",
  "profile_url": "https://nab26.mapyourshow.com/8_0/exhibitor/exhibitor-details.cfm?exhid=8800198"
}

Download as CSV, Excel or JSON from the Output tab.

First-time flag: two sources and a confidence level

• first_time_by_comparison: true when the company is not on last year's list (needs previousYearUrls), else false/null.
• organizer_first_time: true/false from the organizer's "First Time Exhibitor" badge, or null when the show doesn't publish that badge (many don't, e.g. PACK EXPO 2026 has none, NAB Show 2026 does).
• is_first_time: true if either source says first-time, false if the sources say returning, null if there's no source at all.
• first_time_source: organizer+comparison, organizer or comparison.
• first_time_confidence:
  • high: both sources agree, or the comparison used a live (complete) last-year list on a show with no organizer badge.
  • medium: only the organizer badge says so, or the comparison used an archived last-year list with good coverage, or the comparison was live but the organizer didn't badge them.
  • low: only the comparison says so, last year came from the Wayback Machine, and either the archive was incomplete or the organizer didn't badge them. These are often repeat exhibitors the archive missed.
• exhibitor_status: first_time, returning, or lapsed (lapsed rows only appear with lapsedInDataset).
• Without previousYearUrls, shows that publish the badge still get first-time flags (source organizer).

Organizer badge fields (Map Your Show)

• organizer_badges: every badge on the listing, as the show names them (for example "NAB Associate Member", "PMMI Member", "Machinery On-Site", "Green Exhibitor").
• startup, new_products: true/false when the show uses a Startup / Offering New Products badge, null when it doesn't.
• featured_listing: the exhibitor has a featured listing in the directory (usually a paid upgrade, a sign of marketing budget).
• sponsor_only: listed as a sponsor without a floor booth.
• On a2z and generic lists these fields are null (sponsor_only still works from the booth text).

Lapsed exhibitors (win-back list)

With previousYearUrls, the run also saves companies that were at last year's show but are not in this year's directory to the key-value store as LAPSED (JSON) and LAPSED_CSV (open it from the Storage tab). Turn on lapsedInDataset to add them to the main dataset as exhibitor_status = lapsed rows. The run SUMMARY has the count. Read before using: early in a show's sales cycle, some lapsed companies simply haven't signed up yet, and a company that renamed itself can appear as lapsed (old name) and first-time (new name). Example: PACK EXPO 2026 vs 2024 gave 929 lapsed exhibitors.

How the comparison works

Company names are normalized (case, punctuation, accents, and endings like Inc, LLC, Ltd, GmbH are ignored), and on Map Your Show the exhibitor ID is matched too. So "Acme Packaging, Inc." in 2026 matches "ACME PACKAGING" in 2024. Biennial shows work: just give the last edition (for example 2024 for a 2026 show).

Wayback Machine fallback (when last year's directory is gone)

Show organizers often take last year's exhibitor directory offline. When a URL in previousYearUrls (or startUrls) fails or returns zero exhibitors, the Actor looks for archived copies on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

1. It asks the Wayback CDX index (web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx) which copies of that directory exist.
2. Map Your Show: it first uses archived copies of the JSON search API (full records, booths included), then archived exhibitor profile pages (one exhibitor per page). Archived gallery pages are only an empty shell, so they're used just for the show name.
3. a2z / Personify and generic pages: it fetches archived copies of the list page, including category-filtered versions, and merges them.
4. When a page was archived several times, it uses the copy nearest the show's year (skipping truncated copies).
5. Archived pages are downloaded in raw (id_) mode and parsed with the same parsers used for live pages.

Rows and the run summary show where the data came from:

• source: live or wayback
• snapshot: date range of the archived copies used (e.g. 2025-05-15 to 2025-12-15)
• prev_year_source / prev_year_snapshot: same thing for the year you compared against
• prev_year_coverage / prev_year_warning: when last year came from the Wayback Machine, coverage is last year's recovered count divided by this year's count. If it is under 70%, every row and the run's SUMMARY (warnings) say the first-time count is likely too high, because the archive missed some of last year's exhibitors.

Inputs: waybackFallback (on by default), maxWaybackPages (max archived pages per show, default 500), waybackMaxMinutes (time budget per show, default 10).

Limits, read before trusting the first-time flag:

• Archives are partial. If only part of last year's list was archived, exhibitors that were missed look "first-time". Check prev_year_source and the SUMMARY's archive coverage numbers.
• The Wayback Machine rate-limits heavy use, so the Actor fetches slowly (about one page every 4 seconds). Recovering a big Map Your Show list from profile pages can take an hour. Raise waybackMaxMinutes if you need full coverage. The Actor follows archive.org's published limits: at most 48 requests a minute, a clear User-Agent, and a full stop of 60 seconds or more whenever archive.org says slow down (HTTP 429). It never switches IPs to get around a limit, and it stops using Wayback for the run after 3 slow-downs in a row. The Wayback fallback is only for shows whose terms allow collecting their exhibitor list.
• Many a2z directories were never archived. The Actor then stops with a clear message instead of pretending everyone is new.

Tips

• Use the show's English exhibitor list page.
• "Include details" opens every exhibitor profile, so it is slower. Leave it off if you only need names and booths.
• maxItems limits how many of this year's exhibitors are checked (handy for a quick test).

Pricing

Pay per event: $3.00 per 1,000 exhibitor rows ($0.003 per row), plus $0.20 once per run when you compare with a prior year. No start fee. Plus your normal Apify platform usage, which is small. A 1,127-exhibitor show like NAB Show 2026 costs about $3.38 in row fees. Set a max cost per run to cap spend, and use maxItems for a quick test run.

FAQ

How do I find first-time exhibitors at a trade show?

Run this Actor with the show's exhibitor-directory URL. It reads the organizer's own "First Time Exhibitor" badge when there is one and compares this year's list with last year's. Each row gets a high, medium or low confidence level. On NAB Show 2026 the organizer badged 212 of 1,127 exhibitors as first-timers.

Can I get a list of exhibitors who didn't come back this year?

Yes. Give the Actor last year's directory URL. Companies on last year's list that are missing from this year's come out as lapsed exhibitors. On PACK EXPO International 2026 vs 2024 that was 929 companies, a ready win-back list for booth and service vendors.

Which exhibitor directories does it support?

Map Your Show, a2z (Personify) and simple HTML exhibitor pages. It reads only public pages that open without a login. If a show's terms bar collecting its exhibitor list, don't run it on that show.

How much does it cost to scrape an exhibitor list?

Pay per result: $3.00 per 1,000 exhibitor rows, plus $0.20 when you run a year-over-year comparison, plus normal Apify platform usage. A 1,127-exhibitor show like NAB 2026 costs about $3.38 in row fees. Set a maximum cost per run to cap spend.

What if last year's exhibitor list is no longer online?

For shows whose terms allow collecting the list, the Actor can rebuild last year's list from Wayback Machine snapshots. It keeps archive.org's published limits: at most 48 requests a minute, a clear User-Agent, and a 60-second or longer pause on any slow-down. Confidence is marked lower for archived lists.

Which trade shows and countries does it cover?

Any trade show, in the US or abroad, whose public exhibitor directory runs on Map Your Show, a2z or plain HTML and whose terms allow collecting the list. NAB Show and PACK EXPO are only test examples. Coverage: we confirm data availability for your show before you run it; ask in the Issues tab.

Is it legal?

This Actor reads only public exhibitor directories that anyone can open without logging in. You are responsible for how you use the data and for following each show's terms.