Subscriber Discussion

ISC West And ASIS - Audited Reports

CP
Carlton Purvis
Oct 18, 2013

For people -- manufacturers or otherwise -- who go to trade shows how do you measure your ROI? Are you looking at your booth traffic vs. how many people come to the show? Do you know how many big spenders are actually at the show? I found this site that audits trade show traffic and the reports provide some interesting insights. The 2013 numbers for ASIS (who says attendance was up 5.5% this year from last) and ISC West aren't up yet, but you can see past years online.

Here are some excerpts from the ASIS 2012 audit:

Attendees security budgets:

and what people were interested in looking for:

Here are the other reports:

And ISC West's:

Finally, see how much booths cost.

JH
John Honovich
Oct 18, 2013
IPVM

Carlton, nice find.

Here's ISC West number's for comparison:

A couple of interesting patterns:

  • For both shows, about 40% of total attendance is exhibitors, so the 'real' buying attendance is roughly half of the stated total number.
  • ASIS has literally 10x the number of conference attendees as ISC West. This is probably worse for exhibitors because it keeps buyers off the show floor.
  • In terms of people going just for and to exhibits, about twice as many go to ISC West than ASIS.
Avatar
Ross Vander Klok
Oct 21, 2013
IPVMU Certified

Overall very interesting. I find the budget numbers especially interesting. Specifically the large number in the under 10K category, I am VERY surprised by that. This made me think maybe I am doing it wrong, but when I give my budget numbers for things like this I give my TOTAL budget. So yeah we are in the millions, but I am certainly not spending millions on products or services.

JH
John Honovich
Oct 21, 2013
IPVM

Ross, that's a good point. It's possible that people are interpreting the question differently. For instance, if an integrator answers it do they specify their own internal budget for security (tiny) or the amount they buy for resale or (often millions)?

CP
Carlton Purvis
Oct 22, 2013

I asked someone from ASIS about this today. I don't know how the original question is worded but this is what they told me: That question is targeted toward end users who are looking to spend on security sometime in the near future. It's asking what their security budget is, not their organization's total budget.

Avatar
Ross Vander Klok
Oct 22, 2013
IPVMU Certified

Thanks Carlton! I think I am doing it right then. I don't give our overall company budget of hundreds of millions; I just give my very small part of that MUCH larger number. I do think it is misleading to the vendors though. We had eleven people go and I told them all to answer with our overall Security budget number which falls in the 1 to 5 million category. What we actually spend on NEW products or services is probably only 5 to 10 percent of that overall number, but no way am I going to take the time to break it down and give a detailed response.

U
Undisclosed
Oct 21, 2013

I find it interesting that in the what people are looking for did not include VMS? Is this simply data from their registration? Why are the VMS booths always packed?

JH
John Honovich
Oct 21, 2013
IPVM

Just guessing, I would suggest that they are not breaking down the categories to that level of granularity.

I found it interesting that more attendees reportedly were looking for access control rather than video. Why are there so many more video booths then!

町田 英志
Oct 23, 2013

The links from the older data (older reports) seems to have been removed. Thanks for the information!

CP
Carlton Purvis
Oct 23, 2013

You're welcome, Tim. The links are correct, but you're right some seem to have been removed and others are now only available using the audit site's search feature. In case they are in the process of taking them down, here are the most recent reports for ASIS (2012) and ISC West (2011).

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