A screen on your booth has one job: to stop a person walking past who is not looking at you. Not to explain the product, not to tell the company story. Below is how long the loop should run, how large the type has to be at three metres, why sound does not belong there, and what it all costs.
Key takeaways
- A trade show booth video loop should run 30 to 60 seconds. Shorter and it repeats in front of the same passer by, longer and nobody finishes it.
- The first three seconds are the whole film. Someone in the aisle gives you no more, so the main message has to be readable immediately, not after a logo intro.
- No sound and no voiceover. Nobody hears it on a show floor, so everything important has to live in the picture and the text.
- According to the US Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), 81 % of trade show attendees have buying authority, which is why a few seconds of their attention is worth fighting for.
- A booth loop costs 800 to 2 500 euros with us, depending on whether it is shot fresh or built from existing footage.
How long should a trade show booth video loop be?
Thirty to sixty seconds. Under thirty you cannot say anything properly, and over a minute you increase the odds that a viewer only sees the middle, least interesting part.
The reason is simple and slightly uncomfortable: you do not control which part of the loop anyone sees. People arrive at a random second and leave at a random second. So do not build the loop as a story with a beginning and an end. Build it as three to five self contained blocks, each of which works alone. Whoever catches any one of them has to come away knowing what you sell and who you sell it to.
A test you can run on a laptop before the show: play the loop, turn away, then look back after five seconds. If you cannot say what the company does at that moment, rebuild it.
Handle the loop point so the seam is invisible. A hard cut from the last frame to the first reads as a technical fault, and people remember the glitch rather than the brand. This PremiumBeat tutorial shows how a clean loop is built:
How big does text have to be on a booth screen?
Big enough to read from the far side of the aisle, which usually means three times larger than anything you would put in a slide deck. On a 55 inch screen that is a headline roughly one tenth of the image height and no more than six words in a block.
This is not a matter of taste, it can be calculated. The AV industry has a standard for it, ANSI/AVIXA V202.01, which derives required image and element size from the distance of the farthest viewer, together with freely available display size calculators. For a booth, this rule of thumb is enough:
- Headline: at least 1/10 of the screen height. On a 55 inch panel that is around 7 cm of type.
- Subhead: no smaller than half the headline, otherwise it disappears at three metres.
- Never paragraphs. If you need a sentence longer than eight words, it belongs in a leaflet, not on the screen.
- Contrast: light type on a dark background. Halls are over lit and a white background blends into the booth walls.
- Safe area: keep 10 % of the edges empty. Booth screens are usually partly blocked by a shelf, a counter or a person.
Why does sound not belong on a booth screen?
Because nobody hears it, and when they do, it gets in the way of your own salesperson. An exhibition hall is loud, and your colleague is standing in it having the conversation that is supposed to produce an order. A speaker droning next to them all day does not help.
In practice this means everything a voiceover would say has to be in the picture: in on screen text, in a product demo, in a number. Captions are not enough, because captions assume a viewer who stands still and reads sentence by sentence. We covered the difference between captions and text designed for the frame in our article on video captions.
There is one exception: an enclosed area on the booth with headphones or a small meeting corner. Sound makes sense there, because the person sat down and chose to watch. That is no longer a loop, though, it is a different video with a different length.
What goes into the loop if you have almost no footage?
Build it from what the company actually does, not from stock shots. Visitors spot stock footage instantly, and in that second you become interchangeable with everyone else in the hall.
The minimum set that makes a decent loop from a half day of filming:
- Three to five close ups of the product or the production line. Close ups work better on a screen than wide shots, because they stay readable from a distance.
- One shot of people at work. It shows there are humans behind the product.
- Two or three numbers that separate you from the neighbours: lead time, installations delivered, years in the market.
- One sentence saying what you sell and to whom. That sentence appears at the start and again at the end of the loop.
If you already have a company video, most of the material you need is inside it and there is no reason to film again. Ask your production company for the B roll as well, the supporting shots that never made the main edit. The things people forget when filming at an event are listed in our conference videography checklist.
What does a booth video cost, and when is it not worth it?
With us, 800 to 2 500 euros. The lower end applies when we build the loop from existing footage and only handle graphics, edit and export to the screen resolution. The upper end covers a half day of filming, graphics and two language versions.
Now the awkward part. Three cases where a booth video will not help you and the money is better spent elsewhere.
A small booth under 9 m². On that footprint your salesperson stands a metre and a half from the visitor. A screen steals space and attention when the person could simply talk. Spend it on a printed wall and decent lighting instead.
A show you attend for existing clients. If you are there to sign contracts with people who already know you, a loop aimed at passers by interests nobody. A live product demo beats it.
Nobody to staff the booth. Video does not replace a person. We have seen booths running a lovely loop with nobody standing next to it, which makes it expensive wallpaper. If the budget covers only one thing, pay for a second person on the stand.
One more thing worth admitting: the effect of a loop is hard to measure. You cannot tell how many people stopped because of it. So we set up a crude check with clients, a single question, what brought you to us, written down by the salesperson against every contact. It is not precise, but it beats a feeling.
Frequently asked questions
What resolution should a booth video be?
Shoot in 4K and export for the specific screen you are renting. Most rented panels at trade shows run Full HD, but if you get a 4K panel and hand it a Full HD file, the image gets upscaled and the type goes soft. Ask the organiser for the resolution in advance, it is usually in the technical manual for the stand.
Should a booth video be vertical or horizontal?
It depends on how the panel is mounted, which you only learn from the booth floor plan. Vertical screens are increasingly common at shows because they take up less room. Have both versions prepared: on a single project it costs a few dozen euros extra and saves a panic on build day.
How do you get the video onto the booth screen?
The most reliable route is a USB stick straight into a panel with a built in player, plus a second stick as backup. A laptop or a cloud player is an unnecessary risk: hall wifi is congested and a locked laptop at eight in the morning is a classic.
Can you reuse last year's aftermovie?
As a supplement yes, as the main loop no. An aftermovie shows the atmosphere of an event, not what you sell, and the visitor at your booth is asking the second question. If you want to use it, put it on a second screen or as a short block inside a longer loop.
If you are preparing a stand and are unsure whether you have the material for a decent loop, write to us through the contact form and send the booth floor plan. We will also tell you when we think the money belongs elsewhere. How we work at events and what we hand over is described in our video production section. For the wider picture on how exhibitors and organisers measure results, the research published by exhibition industry research is a good starting point.
