Where a pharma congress budget actually goes

Congress season concentrates more of a pharma marketing budget than any other activity of the year. The figures are not disputed inside the industry. What they describe is a split that works against the teams who sign it off.

A third of the budget, sometimes more

Companies spend between 30 and 40% of their annual marketing budget on congresses, according to the Inizio Congress Report 2024. It is the largest single concentration of spend in the calendar, and most of it is committed months before anyone walks into the hall.

Almost all of it goes to the floor

Asked which congress activities receive the highest share of that budget, 94% of respondents placed the exhibit hall booth in their top three. Sponsorships and live events follow. The logic is sound: these are the activities that exist during the three or four days when the audience is in the same building.

The same report names the activity that receives the smallest proportion of the budget: pre-, during- and post-congress communications. Its own conclusion is worth repeating. If the level of investment is the indicator, this aspect of congress marketing is being under-prioritised.

The smallest line is the only one that outlives the event

A booth exists for the duration of the congress. A symposium exists for an hour. Communications around the congress are the only line in that budget that can still be working in March.

That is the asymmetry. The spend is concentrated on the days when attention is guaranteed, and withdrawn from the months when it has to be earned.

What the audience asks for, meanwhile

Emota and IPCAA surveyed 251 physicians across the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain in February 2026. Eighty per cent said the best format for medical education is a combination of live and on-demand content, not one or the other.

The study's managing director is more direct about where the gap sits. Post-congress engagement is the overlooked opportunity, he says, and physicians do not simply want content after an event. They expect it.

None of this is an argument against the booth

The event works. Two in three physicians report changing something in their practice on the basis of what they heard at an industry symposium. The problem is not the three days. The problem is that nothing outlives them.

A badge scan is an address, not a relationship. The conversation that justified the budget stops when the hall empties, and the next contact is a cold one.

What changes when the budget follows the audience

Medical teams at large pharma groups create a Juisci space on their key therapeutic areas or congresses, and onboard physicians directly from their booth. The space keeps publishing peer-reviewed science after the event, in the reader's language, matched to their practice.

The team gets one place to keep physicians engaged, bring them back to relevant scientific content, and measure what is actually read. The three days become the first month of a year.

Peer-reviewed journals. Supervised by our medical team. Data hosted in the European Union, GDPR.

What matters, and why.

Sources

• Inizio Congress Report 2024, survey of congress and brand teams.
• Emota and IPCAA, Healthcare Professional Congress Experience Report, February 2026, 251 physicians across six countries.

Talk it through

Book 30 minutes with our team and we will show you what happens after the booth comes down.