Meet AZoNetwork at Lab Innovations 2026
AZoNetwork is heading back to the NEC Birmingham on 4 and 5 November 2026 for Lab Innovations, and this year we are bringing a free Digital Marketing Report, a film crew and an AI talk on the Future of Laboratories Stage.
Here is a small puzzle worth thinking about before you pack your lanyard. A lab manager, a process engineer and a metals buyer walk into the same building. In most of the UK calendar, they never would. For two days in November, they do, because Lab Innovations shares the NEC with Advanced Engineering UK and the UK Metals Expo. That makes it one of the rare places where the people who run laboratories, the people who build the instruments and the people who supply the materials are all within a short walk of each other.
For anyone marketing to scientists and engineers, that is a lot of the buying journey in one place. Our sites, from AZoM and AZoNano to News-Medical and AZoLifeSciences, reach the same audiences online all year round. Lab Innovations is our chance to meet them, and you, in person.
Find your audience
Lab Innovations runs on Wednesday 4 November (09:00 to 17:00) and Thursday 5 November (09:00 to 16:00) in Hall 2 of the NEC. Next door, Advanced Engineering fills Halls 3 and 3a and the UK Metals Expo takes Hall 4, all under one visitor badge. Registration is free, and every piece of 2026 conference content is CPD accredited by The CPD Group.
You will find the AZoNetwork team on Stand L126. Pop over for a coffee and a chat about marketing to scientists and engineers.
| Show |
AZoNetwork Audience Segments |
| Lab Innovations |
Life Sciences
Lab Automation and Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, Biopharma, Cell Biology, Genetics and Genomics, and Food Analysis and Safety
|
| Advanced Engineering |
Engineering and Manufacturing
Additive Manufacturing, Aerospace, Automotive, Industrial Automation and Robotics, Non-Destructive Testing, and Mechanical and Physical Properties Testing
|
| UK Metals Expo |
Advanced Materials
Metals, Composites, Advanced Polymers, Battery Materials, Surface Measurement and Thermal Analysis
|
From SEO health check to AI visibility
Last year we were offering visitors a free SEO health check and on-site video. Since then, one question has come up with clients more than any other: "What does ChatGPT say about us?" Twelve months ago, that was a curiosity. Now it is a fair business question. A growing share of researchers and engineers start a product search by asking an AI assistant, and the answer they get may name your competitor and not you, with no ranking page to click through.
So the health check has grown up. This year, it is a full Digital Marketing Report that looks at search and AI side by side.
Get a free Digital Marketing Report
The report is free, built around your own site, topics and competitors, and it looks at four things:
- Technical website health - indexation, crawlability, speed and site structure.
- SEO performance - rankings, organic traffic and the keywords that matter most to you.
- AI visibility - whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode name you, cite you, or leave you out.
- Competitor analysis - who the engines name when you are not there, and why.
A business can rank well on Google and still be missing from most of the AI answers in its own niche. In the example above, seven of ten technique topics return no mention of the company at all, while a competitor is named in 92% of relevant answers. The report then groups the open questions into content clusters, recommends fixes such as answer-first explainers, FAQ schema and spec tables on the page, and sets a 90-day target to measure against.
Why does a science publisher care about this? Because AI engines lean on trusted, independent sources to decide who to mention. Third-party coverage on specialist sites like AZoM, AZoSensors or News-Medical is exactly the kind of corroboration that helps a brand show up. The report sits alongside your existing SEO work and does not replace it.
The process is simple: request a review, we build the report, you receive it as a PDF, and we call to talk it through. If you know you are coming to the show, request yours now and we will bring it with us to go through on the stand.
Catch our AI talk on Thursday
If you only make one session, we would (understandably) point you to ours. Give people back the work they were hired to do, and how to think about AI runs on Thursday 5 November, 1.45pm to 2.30pm, on the Future of Laboratories Stage, in the AI, Automation and Data track.
Give people back the work they were hired to do
Kris Walker, Head of Product and Operations at AZoNetwork and lead at Azthena AI Solutions, tells the story of a salesperson with forty years in the job who now sends five tailored proposals in the time one used to take. Kris explains why chat licences rarely stick, and how to build AI like a production line: your data and rules go in first, one tool does one job, and a person signs off every time.
How to think about AI
Will Soutter, AZoNetwork's AI Innovation Lead and a chemist by training, goes underneath the chat box. What a large language model actually does, why it sometimes states a wrong fact with confidence, and how to map a workflow to find the steps where AI helps and the ones where a simpler tool would do.
Whether you run a lab or sell to one, you should leave knowing which admin to hand over first, and how to judge the next AI pitch that lands on your desk. It also counts towards your CPD.
The wider programme is well worth a browse too. The Royal Society of Chemistry Stage covers greener lab work and automation, the Biotech Stage (sponsored by Cytiva) takes in genomics and AI in biotech, and Lab Live (sponsored by Sartorius) focuses on more sustainable lab environments. The full line-up is on the Lab Innovations conference page.
Turn your stand or talk into lasting content
Exhibitors spend months planning two days on a stand, and most of what is said there disappears the moment the hall lights go off. Our Lab Innovations video package is designed to keep some of it.
Our team films a three-minute interview with one of your scientists or product specialists, right at the show, so nobody has to leave the stand. You receive:
- A three-minute interview video that puts your experts and their thinking front and centre.
- A written interview, turned from the transcript into an article.
- Publication across the AZoNetwork after the event, in front of the scientists and engineers who read our sites.
The package costs £1,700 (€1,970 or $2,270). Think of it as evergreen content: a product specialist explaining a technique still answers buyer questions long after the show, both in search and in AI answers. To book a slot, get in touch.
Come and say hello
The best conversations at a trade show are rarely the ones you planned, but a little planning helps. If you are visiting or exhibiting, here is how to make the most of us:
- Visit Stand L126 in Hall 2 on 4 or 5 November.
- Request your Digital Marketing Report before the show so we can walk you through it in person.
- Book a video interview for your team using the video package.
- Join Kris and Will on the Future of Laboratories Stage on Thursday at 1.45pm.
We reach more than 40 million scientists, researchers and engineers a year across our specialist sites. For two days in Birmingham, we look forward to meeting a few of them in person. See you at the NEC.
