BrandMyLaptop / Guides

Cheaper than a conference booth

A conference booth costs thousands before you staff it. A sticker on an attendee's laptop is in the room for the price of one spot.

What a conference booth costs

Floor space for a standard 10×10 ft booth runs between $10,000 and $15,000 at an average exhibit hall, according to GES’s exhibitor budgeting guide, and the same guide’s rule of thumb is that the space is about a third of the total. The stand itself, shipping, drayage, electricity, the furniture rental, the lead-scanner licence, the flights and hotels for the two people staffing it, and the three days those two people are not doing their jobs make up the rest. For a small company that wants to be seen at one event, most of that money buys a square of carpet in a hall people walk through on their way to the talks.

Sponsorship packages start lower and go higher: a logo on the lanyard, the coffee break, the Wi-Fi password, the after-party. They put your name on the furniture of the event. What they do not do is put it in front of a particular person for more than a glance, and on the day the event ends, so does the placement.

To add up the whole bill for one event, booth, travel, swag and shipping included, use the conference sponsorship cost calculator. It shows what each person reached costs and the creators already going to the same event.

The laptops are going anyway

Conferences are full of open laptops: in the talks, where the row behind looks at the back of the lid for forty-five minutes; in the hallway track, where people work between sessions; at the side events and the dinners, where the real conversations happen; and on the podium, for everyone who speaks. A sticker on an attendee’s laptop is in every one of those rooms, at eye level, and it stays on for months after the event, through every other meeting, café and office the laptop goes to.

That is the difference between sponsoring the event and sponsoring the people at it. The first is bought from the organiser, by the edition. The second is bought from the attendee, by the term, and the attendee is the one the other attendees are actually looking at.

106 laptops on the board go to conferences and meetups. See them. Every listing shows its upcoming stops with dates, so you know the laptop is going before you buy, and the events pages list who is going where.

Upcoming conferences with laptops going

• Web Summit Lisbon, 9–12 Nov3 laptops
• Adobe MAX Miami Beach, 10–12 Nov1 laptop
• Slush Helsinki, 18–19 Nov1 laptop
• SXSW Austin, 15–21 Mar2 laptops
• Cannes Lions Cannes, 21–25 Jun1 laptop

What it costs against a booth

The median spot sells for $240, paid once for a term of 3 to 24 months. Ten laptops going to the same event cost about $2,399 in all, and every one of them is still carrying your logo a month after the hall has been swept. Prices by spot.

How to do it

1. 1

   Start three weeks out

   Sellers have up to fourteen days from approving your logo to print and apply the sticker. Buy two weeks before the event at the latest; three gives you room for a refusal.

2. 2

   Find the laptops going

   The event pages list every creator whose listing names the event or has a stop in its city that week. The conferences and meetups slice lists everyone who takes their laptop to events in general.

3. 3

   Read the stops, then the price

   A listing with a dated stop at the event is a laptop that will be in the room. One tagged conferences with no stop is a laptop that goes to some conference, some time. Pay more for the first.

4. 4

   Buy several on one card

   The campaign page takes one card for up to 12 laptops. Each spot is held and charged only when that seller approves, so one refusal costs you nothing on the rest.

5. 5

   Or post a brief that names the event

   A brief with the event, the audience and a budget per spot goes to the sellers going, and the ones who fit apply with a buy link.

6. 6

   Ask for the photo in the room

   The seller posts a proof photo on the listing within fourteen days. Ask for a second one from the venue; most are happy to, and it is the one you will want to post.

Making the sticker work in a hall

A conference hall is lit from above and the lid is seen from three rows back, so the rules are the ones for a road sign rather than a website header:

• One mark, no tagline, no URL. At 9.5 cm wide on the top row, a tagline is a smudge; at 4.5 cm square in the middle row, so is a wordmark of more than six letters.
• Contrast against silver. Most lids are silver or space grey. A white logo on a transparent sticker disappears on the first and a black one on the second; print on a solid background.
• Size beats position. The top row holds the biggest stickers, 9.5 × 5.5 cm on a 14-inch lid, and it is the row that can be read from the back of a room. It is priced accordingly; the middle row is 4.5 cm square, under half the area, at a fraction of the price.
• One sticker, not a cluster. A lid with two logos on it gives each more attention than a lid with nine. The drawn lid on every listing shows what is already taken.

After the event

This is the part a booth cannot offer. The laptop goes home, back to the office, to the next client meeting and the next meetup, and the sticker goes with it for the whole term. A spot bought for a November conference on a twelve-month listing is still in the picture the following October, at the same event’s next edition, at no further cost. Brands that buy for an event tend to pick the longest term the seller offers for that reason.

Measuring it

A booth gives you a list of scanned badges, most of whom wanted the T-shirt. A sticker gives you nothing to count, and this site does not pretend otherwise: nobody measures the people who look at a laptop lid. What you can measure is the link the listing carries, with a UTM on it, and the answer to “where did you hear of us?” on your own sign-up form in the weeks after the event. Judge it the way you judge the lanyard: by whether the name was seen by the right people, for the price, and for how long.

Questions

How do I know a laptop will actually be at the event?

Every listing shows the seller's upcoming stops with dates, and the event pages list only laptops whose stops name the event or sit in its city during it. Buy on those, not on a general conferences tag.

How far ahead do I need to buy?

Sellers have up to fourteen days from approving your logo to print and apply the sticker, so two weeks before the event is the latest. The event pages count the days left.

What if the seller does not go after all?

The sticker is on for the whole term either way, and the term is what you bought. If the sticker never goes on at all, the seller refunds you in full from their dashboard, and the platform's commission goes back with it.

Can I sponsor several attendees at once?

Yes. The campaign page takes one card for up to 12 laptops, and each spot is charged only when that seller approves your logo.

Does the sticker come off after the conference?

No. It stays on for the term the listing states, 3 to 24 months, through every other room the laptop goes to.

Related guides

• Sticker marketing that lands on a laptopMost promotional stickers end up in a drawer. A sticker on a specific person's laptop is seen every day, for months.
• Developer marketing, on the laptops developers carryDevelopers ignore ads and notice what other developers use. A sticker on a developer's laptop is seen where they work, meet and give talks.
• Micro-influencer marketing, offlineA sponsored post lasts a day in a feed. A sticker on a creator's laptop shows up in every video, stream and meeting for months.
• Selling ad space on a laptop lid, a short historyIn 2010 Cameron Herold sold the stickers on his laptop for $2,500 each. In 2026 one MacBook paid for itself twice over. How the idea became a marketplace.