An exhibitor who scanned twenty badges and is told the floor averaged thirty-one will conclude the event did not work for them, and may not book next year. The odd part is that twenty leads put them above the middle of the floor. The number that misled them was yours.
A fifth of the floor, half the leads
PheedLoop, an event platform, analysed exhibitor-level lead records from 236 events held between 2024 and 2026: 357,681 captured leads across 9,982 exhibitors with lead retrieval. Ranking each event's exhibitors by leads captured, the top 10% took a median 36% of all leads, the top 20% took 55%, and the top half took 87%.1
This is not a few unusual events pulling the figure up. The top-20% share sat between 47% and 63% for the middle half of events, and it barely moved year to year: 54% in 2024, 55% in 2025, 56% in 2026.1
Bigger events do not even it out. The top-20% share was 51% at events under 500 attendees and 61% at events of 2,000 or more. Leads per active exhibitor roughly doubled across that range, from about 24 to about 50, so a larger event gave everyone more, but the strongest exhibitors kept a larger share of it.1
Access is a packaging decision
One figure in the report is easy to miss and matters most to organisers. Only about half of approved exhibitors had lead retrieval at all; whether they did was decided by how the organiser packaged it and whether the exhibitor bought it. Measured against all approved exhibitors, median participation was 55%. Measured against exhibitors who actually had the tool, it was 85%.1
So exhibitors who can capture leads overwhelmingly do. If half your floor goes home with no lead data, that is mostly a commercial decision you made, not a sign of exhibitor apathy. Bundling lead retrieval into every package, rather than selling it as an extra, is the most direct lever you have. It also changes what you can promise: you cannot tell next year's sponsors what leads look like at your event if half this year's floor had no way to record any.
Why the average misleads
When a few exhibitors capture a lot, the average is dragged above what most achieve. Among non-sponsor exhibitors in the dataset, the mean was 31 leads and the median 17, with the top quartile starting above 40.1 Report the mean, and most of your floor sees itself as below average.
PheedLoop's own example makes the point. An exhibitor with 20 leads reads that as failure against an average of 31, and as mid-pack with a clear target against a median of 17 and a top quartile starting above 40.1 Same event, same leads, a very different renewal conversation.
Sponsors make it worse if they are pooled in. Sponsoring exhibitors had lead retrieval enabled more often (70% against 44%), used it more (83% against 75%) and captured more (median 25 against 17).1 Mixing them into the benchmark raises the bar for everyone who did not pay for top billing.
What to report instead
Sponsors expect qualified conversations backed by credible data,2 and an honest distribution is more credible than a flattering average. Hand it over with the lead files, not weeks later.
What lead counts do not tell you
PheedLoop is careful about this, and so should we be. Lead capture is not exhibitor return on investment: the data has no booth cost, location, size or sponsorship tier, and no record of what the leads became. It also found that floors with more even capture recorded more scans per attendee, but warns that this is a correlation between events and should not be read as proof that evening out the floor would raise the total.1
There is also the attendee's side. A badge scan passes someone's details to another organisation. Under India's DPDP Act that needs to sit within the consent they gave, so say plainly at registration that exhibitors may scan badges and receive contact details. Our DPDP guide for organisers covers the detail.
When the alternative wins: at a 150-person dinner with four sponsor tables, a lead app is overkill. An introduction from the host is worth more to a sponsor than any number of scans.
Where Aurentex sits
Our mobile lead-capture app is marked coming soon on our pricing page, and it is not built yet. We would rather say so here than let you assume otherwise. Today, Aurentex handles the registration, badges and floor plan that lead capture depends on, on your own domain and branding, with 0% of ticket sales and your first event free. If exhibitor lead capture is the reason you are reading, talk to us about timing before you plan around it.
Common questions
How many leads does a typical exhibitor capture?
A median of 17 among non-sponsor exhibitors, against a mean of 31.1
Do bigger events spread leads more evenly?
No. The top-20% share rose from 51% at small events to 61% at large ones.1
What should organisers report?
The distribution and the exhibitor's position in it, with sponsors benchmarked separately.
Do attendees need to consent to badge scans?
Sharing with exhibitors should be covered by what attendees agreed to at registration. This is general guidance, not legal advice.