Nobody Has Measured Whether Conference Attendees Show More Buying Intent. That's a $312K Blind Spot
Key takeaways
- Enterprise companies spend a median $312,000 a year on intent data, mid market $84,000 and SMB $24,000 (The Starr Conspiracy, 2025).
- In a peer reviewed study, purchased audience segments built to reach IT decision makers hit them 16.1% to 18.2% of the time, against 16.0% for random serving (Quantitative Marketing and Economics).
- The same study found job titles in third party profiles matched reality only 16.3% to 17.0% of the time.
- B2B buyers spend only 17% of their buying journey meeting potential suppliers (Gartner).
- 74% of attendees say in person events are the best place to discover new products, and 58% call discovery their top commercial objective at events (Freeman, 2025).
What is intent data, and how much do B2B teams spend on it?
Intent data is behavioural evidence that a company or person may be researching a purchase. It comes in three kinds:
| Type | Where it comes from | Example |
|---|---|---|
| First party | Your own channels | Visits to your pricing page, demo requests, email clicks |
| Second party | Another company's first party data, sold to you | Category browsing on a software review site |
| Third party | Aggregated across many publishers and data providers | A "topic surge" when a company reads more content on a subject than usual |
Teams spend heavily on it. The Starr Conspiracy's 2025 B2B intent data benchmarks put median annual spend at $312,000 for enterprise companies, $84,000 for mid market and $24,000 for SMB.
Most of what that money buys is inferred. Someone at a company read more articles on a topic, so the company might be in market. Nobody at that company told you they were buying.
How reliable are the signals behind intent and targeting programs?
Two pieces of evidence are worth knowing.
The first is about the profile data that many targeting and account based programs use to decide who a signal belongs to: job titles, roles and company matches bought from third parties. A peer reviewed study by Nico Neumann, Catherine Tucker and colleagues, published in Quantitative Marketing and Economics, tested purchased B2B audience segments built to reach IT decision makers.
| Targeting method | Share of impressions reaching real IT decision makers |
|---|---|
| Deterministic third party segments | 16.1% to 18.2% |
| Random ad serving (baseline) | 16.0% |
| Probabilistic third party segments | 9.4% to 11.0% |
The deterministic segments were not statistically better than random, and the probabilistic ones did worse. When the researchers checked the profiles themselves, job titles matched reality only 16.3% to 17.0% of the time. This study measured audience profile data, not behavioural intent signals, but the two are often sold and used together.
The second is about intent signals themselves. The Starr Conspiracy measured how often accounts flagged by intent signals later showed matching activity in the CRM. Precision ran at 0.42 for pilot account based programs, 0.51 for programs one to three years old and 0.63 for mature ones. Even in mature programs, about 37% of flagged accounts showed no matching CRM activity.
None of this makes intent data worthless. It means a signal inferred from anonymous behaviour needs checking before it decides where your team spends its time.
How is conference attendance different from intent data?
It is not inferred. A conference registration is:
Named. A specific person at a specific company, not an IP address or a cookie.
Dated. You know when they will be in the room, and that their attention is on the category that week.
Costly to the attendee. They paid for a ticket, booked travel and blocked days out of their calendar. Reading an article costs nothing.
Purposeful. Attendees go to discover. Freeman's 2025 trends research found 74% of attendees say in person events are the best place to discover new products, and 58% say discovery is their number one commercial objective at events.
Timing matters too. Gartner's research on the B2B buying journey found buyers spend only 17% of their buying time meeting with potential suppliers. A conference is one of the few moments a buyer deliberately puts themselves in a room full of sellers.
| Signal | How it is captured | Named person? | Known date? | Cost to the person |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Third party topic surge | Inferred from content consumption | Usually no | No | None |
| First party website visit | Inferred from IP or cookie match | Often no | Yes | None |
| Second party review site research | Inferred from category browsing | Sometimes | Roughly | None |
| Conference registration | Registered by the attendee | Yes | Yes | Ticket, travel, days out of office |
What can attendance not tell you?
Whether that person is buying. Attendance shows attention to a category. It does not show purchase intent, budget or timing.
A conference room is also full of people who are not buyers at all: exhibitors, sponsors, partners, investors, consultants and other sellers chasing the same accounts you are. On its own, an attendee list is a list of people interested in a category. It becomes an intent signal only after you separate the likely buyers from everyone else.
Has anyone measured conference attendance as an intent signal?
Not that we could find. We looked for published research linking event attendance to intent scoring and found none. Intent data vendors measure online behaviour. Event research measures attendee satisfaction, lead volume and booth traffic. The two have not been joined.
That is a gap worth noticing. HockeyStack analysed 2.6 million B2B SaaS deals across 198 companies and found 12.1% of deals sourced from live events went on to close, against 11.1% for other channels. Events already produce deals that close at least as well as other channels. The missing piece is knowing which attendees to talk to before the event, rather than after.
How does Sideroom turn attendance into a scored signal?
We treat every registered company as a named, dated signal of attention, then do the work needed to find the buyers in it.
- Gather the full room. Attendee lists, exhibitors, sponsors and speakers.
- Check the evidence. Every company is verified across multiple sources before it is scored, so a registration is tied to the right business and reflects its latest news.
- Score against your ICP with a jury. Three models from three different AI labs rate each company independently. When they agree, the score stands. When they split, a person reviews it. See why we score with a jury, not a judge.
- Grade the evidence. Every score shows how strong the case behind it is, so your team knows which meetings are certain and which need a quick check.
Attendance tells you who will be in the room and paying attention. Scoring tells you which of them could actually buy.
What should you do with this before your next event?
Treat the attendee list as one of your strongest signals of the quarter, and score it before you book flights, not after you get home. If you already pay for intent data, cross reference the two. A company showing a topic surge on your category that is also registered for the conference you are attending gives you two independent reasons to reach out.
For how to define who counts as a fit, see how to build a conference ICP.
See how Sideroom scores your next event's attendee list against your ICP
Sources
- The Starr Conspiracy, B2B Intent Data Benchmarks 2025: https://www.thestarrconspiracy.com/insights/benchmarks/b2b-intent-data-benchmarks-2025
- Neumann, Tucker et al., "Is first or third party audience data more effective for reaching the right customers? The case of IT decision makers," Quantitative Marketing and Economics: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11129-023-09268-7
- Gartner, The B2B Buying Journey: https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey
- Freeman, 2025 trends report on commerce at events: https://www.freeman.com/about/press/new-freeman-trends-report-finds-commerce-is-the-top-priority-at-events/
- HockeyStack, The State of Event Marketing in 2025: https://www.hockeystack.com/lab-blog-posts/the-state-of-event-marketing-in-2025-so-far
FAQ
What is B2B intent data?
Intent data is behavioural evidence that a company or person may be researching a purchase. First party intent comes from your own channels, such as pricing page visits. Second party intent is another company's data sold to you, such as review site browsing. Third party intent is aggregated across many publishers, such as topic surges. Most of it is inferred rather than declared by the buyer.
How accurate is purchased B2B audience data?
Often less accurate than it looks. A peer reviewed study found purchased segments aimed at IT decision makers reached them 16.1% to 18.2% of the time, no better than random serving at 16.0%, and job titles in the profiles were correct only about 17% of the time.
Is conference attendance a buying signal?
It is a strong signal of attention to a category, because it is named, dated and costly to the attendee. It is not proof of purchase intent. Many attendees are exhibitors, partners or other sellers, so attendance needs scoring against your ICP before it tells you who might buy.
Should I stop buying intent data?
Not necessarily. Use it as one input and check it against other signals. A company showing topic intent that is also registered for a conference you attend gives you two independent reasons to reach out.
How do you know a conference registration belongs to a real buyer?
Check it. Sideroom verifies each registered company across multiple sources before scoring, scores it with three independent models, and grades the strength of the evidence so your team knows how far to trust each score.