Backing the right kids IP at Licensing Expo

Licensing Expo is where big opportunities surface quickly. And it's here, 19–21 May.

Over the next few days, you'll be exposed to thousands of properties: legacy entertainment franchises, emerging kids and family IP, global players repositioning for new markets and categories. You'll have conversations that are difficult to replicate anywhere else in the calendar.

But the real value of Licensing Expo is what you decide to do afterwards. And those decisions carry weight.

The pressure behind the opportunity

If you're attending, you're there to do business. You might be deciding which character leads your Black Friday licensed range, working out which IP earns a Christmas fixture before your range locks, choosing which preschool property justifies a three-year deal, or building the business case for the summer retail pitch window.

In each case, the expectation is the same: make the right call and be able to stand behind it. That's not always straightforward, because most of the signals available at the event are immediate, visible and often incomplete.

What makes licensing decisions difficult right now

The licensing industry has spent decades making future decisions with yesterday's data. For too long, shelf space has been allocated based on what sold last season. Licensing deals have been signed on the strength of a pitch deck. Range decisions have been made by buyers using their own kids as a barometer for what is popular. The result is a market still grappling with the same core questions: is there genuine purchase intent beyond awareness, will the product sell through, and how long will this IP hold? Too often, these are answered with gut instinct rather than evidence. Some bets pay off. Those that do not are costly.

At the same time, the inputs many teams rely on haven't changed. Sales data arrives late, often months after the moment to act has passed. By the time category performance is visible in the numbers, the engagement driving it has already moved. Social buzz can be misleading. Visibility is not the same as demand, and nowhere is that more true than in kids IP, where a property can dominate one quarter and lose traction the next. Past performance in kids and family categories is a notoriously unreliable guide to future audience engagement. Children age out of properties fast, and what resonated with a five-year-old last quarter is a different question from what will drive purchase intent at the shelf in 12–18 months.

These signals don't tell you what will perform. And they don't tell you why.

The gap between what you see and what will work

At Licensing Expo, certain properties stand out immediately. They're visible, they generate conversation, and the sales story sounds compelling. But in kids and family IP especially, visibility is not the same as demand.

The more useful question is: what is actually happening with audiences behind that visibility? Because what drives commercial performance isn't just awareness. It's engagement, sustained, category-relevant engagement with the right age groups in your specific markets. Are kids actively connecting with this IP, or passively exposed to it? Is that engagement holding, or was it driven by a single content moment? Does it translate across the markets you operate in? Does it index strongly with the audience profile your retail or brand partners need?

These are harder questions to answer in the moment. They're the ones that determine whether an opportunity is worth backing.

A more useful way to evaluate IP

Instead of relying on what stands out on the show floor, it helps to anchor decisions in a clearer structure. The strongest kids and family licensing decisions balance four things, the four components at the heart of the TIF Engagement Index:

The IP that performs best is rarely just the most recognisable. It's the one with the strongest combination of these signals, and those things aren't always visible from the show floor. This is exactly what The Insights Family's new Engagement Index tracks: independent, first-party data collected directly from kids and families across 22 markets, continuously, so that the read you get reflects what's happening right now rather than what sold last season.

The conversations you'll have at Licensing Expo are genuinely valuable. You're speaking directly with brand owners, partners and decision-makers, seeing how IP is being positioned and commercialised, and getting a real sense of where the market is heading. The goal is to challenge the information you're given, not take it at face value. As you move through meetings, it's worth pushing further: where is this IP growing in kids and family audiences, and is that growth being driven by the age group your category serves? How does it perform across your key markets, not just the territory the licensor is pitching from? Is the engagement you're hearing about sustained, or was it driven by a single content moment? What evidence exists beyond the sales deck?

Those questions help you move from interest to evaluation. They're also the questions the TIF Engagement Index is designed to answer, with data that doesn't lag.

After the event is where decisions are made

Once the event ends, the dynamic changes quickly. Shortlists are created. Internal conversations begin. Budgets and timelines come into focus. This is where initial impressions get tested. What looked exciting on the show floor now needs to justify budget, confidence and commercial commitment. This is often the point where gaps appear, because the decision needs to be clear, defensible and commercially sound.

The sales figures you were shown at the expo reflect what has already happened. What you need at this stage is a read on what's happening with audiences right now.

The difference between “this feels like the right direction” and “we can prove this is the right decision” is significant, especially when you're presenting to stakeholders, investors or partners. What bridges that gap is access to consistent, independent data on how kids and family audiences are engaging with IP over time. Not platform analytics. Not syndicated sales data. First-party signals, collected directly from children and parents across markets, that tell you whether an IP is building the kind of engagement that translates to commercial performance.

The TIF Engagement Index is built on what kids are actively feeling, seeking out, and identifying with right now. It is the licensing industry's first continuous ranking of franchise strength built on real-time engagement with kids aged 3–18: how deeply fans connect, how widely an IP reaches, and how fiercely it holds its most loyal audience. For a licensee building a territory-specific range, a licensor needing evidence to support an IP pitch, or any brand requiring independent, market-comparable data for licensing decisions, it is the new currency for those conversations.

Licensing Expo remains one of the most important moments in the calendar for kids and family IP, for discovering where audiences are heading, where the commercial opportunity is building, and which properties are worth committing to. The teams that get the most from the event leave not just with a shortlist, but with a clear basis for the decisions they make from it.

The licensing industry has spent decades making future decisions with yesterday's data. That changes now.

If you want to pressure-test what you've seen at the show with always-on, independent, first-party kids and family audience data,contact usor emailhello@theinsightsfamily.comabout accessing the TIF Engagement Index, and make the call with confidence.