Performance Marketing Agency Conferences 2026 to 2027: Hero Conf, SMX Advanced, and What Else Made the List

You typed performance marketing conference into a search box and got twenty results that all copy each other's dates. Two names on this list are the ones PPC agencies keep naming back to back: Hero Conf and SMX Advanced. The rest range from a $299 regional day in Texas to a $2,999 lead generation show in Las Vegas. A few big names you may have scrolled past do not belong on this list at all.

Hero Conf US runs September 9 to 10, 2027, in San Diego, a two day badge from $500. SMX Advanced splits into two cities for the first time in 2027, San Diego in March and Boston in September, with an all access badge starting near $1,445. State of Search in Texas is $299. Affiliate World Asia in Bangkok is $599.

If you have ever asked which conferences are actually worth attending for PPC, you are not the only one. Agency owners ask the same question every year on r/PPC, and mostly get pointed back to the same two names. This guide has the up to date answer: every event with a real 2026 or 2027 date, what a badge costs, and why a few familiar names did not make the cut.

Eight performance marketing events have a real date through December 2027

Eight events have a real date between now and the end of 2027. That is a fuller calendar than most performance marketing niches get. The timeline and table below hold every one, plus the ones an old best of list would send you to by mistake.

Hero Conf San Diego just wrapped, and the next US edition is a full year out. The 2026 run was September 15 to 16. Hero Conf US does not come back until September 9 to 10, 2027, also in San Diego, with a Friend Pass starting at $500 on the registration page. If your budget only stretches to one US trip, that gap is the reason to look at SMX Advanced in the meantime. Attendees who go back to back say the crowd grows fast, roughly double in a single year.

SMX Advanced is doing something new in 2027: two US cities. San Diego runs March 17 to 19, and Boston follows September 20 to 22. Pricing for Boston is not posted yet, but San Diego's all access badge starts near $1,445 early bird. Pick whichever coast is closer, since the content is the same conference run twice.

Three events land within five weeks of each other in the spring. SMX Advanced San Diego, LeadsCon in Las Vegas, and Hero Conf UK in Brighton all fall between March 17 and April 16, 2027. None of the three overlaps on the calendar, so a busy quarter is possible if your shop wants more than one room this year. Asked to name the best search conferences going, one PPC specialist listed exactly this pair alongside Hero Conf.

Traffic and Conversion Summit, once the closest thing to a real answer for this crowd, is gone. Its own organizers confirmed it is no longer running. It still shows up on marketing conference roundups with a phantom future date, which sends people searching for it a year too late.

PPC agencies keep naming the same two events, Hero Conf and SMX Advanced

When agency owners ask which conference to book, the answer is almost always one of these two. Hero Conf is built for paid search and paid social specifically. SMX Advanced covers SEO alongside PPC, and leans senior.

Hero Conf earns its reputation as the PPC only room. One reviewer calls it "100% PPC focused. Tons of room to learn and network with like minded people", and it runs alongside brightonSEO so a two day trip covers both crowds under one badge. It is co-located in both San Diego and Brighton, UK, which makes the UK edition worth a look if your clients are European.

SMX Advanced is the senior room, and PPC people put it in the same short list as Hero Conf. One agency owner summed up the current US calendar bluntly. "Heroconf and SMX Advanced are the only (large) good ones left for in person in the US." It covers SEO and AI search alongside PPC, so it fits a shop that touches more than paid media.

The two are not interchangeable, and the price gap tells you why. Hero Conf at $500 buys two days of PPC and paid social only. SMX Advanced at $1,445 and up buys three days plus workshops across three disciplines. Pick Hero Conf if your day is Google Ads and Meta Ads for clients; pick SMX Advanced if your shop also runs SEO or you want a senior level workshop track. European shops land on the same split, with an SMX Munich or Paris PPC track and Hero Conf UK named as the two worth the trip.

A badge runs from $299 to just under $3,000

The spread between the cheapest and most expensive badge runs ten times over. State of Search at $299 sits at one end. LeadsCon's on site price near $2,999 sits at the other.

A regional day like State of Search is the cheapest real option on this list. At $299 in Grapevine, Texas, it costs a fraction of the flagship badges. It still comes up in the same threads PPC agencies use to compare the best US PPC conferences. It is the right pick when the budget line is thin and you still want a day of real talks.

LeadsCon prices rise fast the closer you book to the show. A conference pass starts near $999 and climbs to $2,999 on site, though a cheaper $199 expo only pass covers the show floor without the sessions. That tiered pricing is normal for a lead generation crowd, which runs on the same urgency as the offers it sells. First timers still ask whether it is worth attending at all, which is a fair question at this price.

None of these five numbers tells you which room actually fits your agency. A $299 badge and a $2,999 badge can both be the wrong purchase for the same shop. The fork below sorts that out by what you actually sell, not by the sticker price. Field marketers who plan a whole year of trips ask themselves the same thing every quarter: which room is actually worth a five figure spend.

Pick the room by what you actually buy for clients, not by the biggest name

Every one of these rooms is built for one kind of buyer. Match the room to what you actually run for clients, and most agencies on this page land on one of two rows.

Google Ads and Meta Ads for local or ecommerce clients points at Hero Conf. That is the exact crowd it is built for, and the badge is the cheapest of the flagship options. Buy the early window and treat brightonSEO's sessions as a bonus, not the reason you came. One past attendee called the panels, speakers and parties all exceptional the year they went.

If SEO is also on your plate, SMX Advanced is worth the extra cost. It is the room where search marketers who run more than one discipline say the sessions actually apply to their day job. Pick San Diego or Boston by whichever coast costs you less to reach.

On whether a PPC specific event is even the right room, the forums disagree. One agency owner pushes back and says "I've found significantly more value at conferences that weren't specific to PPC." We still put Hero Conf and SMX Advanced first here. Most agencies on this page buy specifically for the peer conversations those two rooms guarantee, and a general conference does not promise that.

If your clients are affiliates or lead buyers, skip the PPC only rooms entirely. Affiliate World Asia is built for media buyers running offers across borders, and LeadsCon is built for pay per call and lead generation work. Neither crowd overlaps much with a shop running Google Ads for a local dentist. One recurring review calls Affiliate World more a networking event for media buyers than a place to learn new tactics. A PPC specialist asking about the Asia edition was told the deals happen between sessions, not during them.

DMEXCO, Cannes Lions, and three more that are not built for this room

Five names come up in every marketing conference roundup, and none of them fits a paid media agency. Each is a real, well attended event. None is built for the room this guide is about.

DMEXCO is real, but built for the wrong buyer. It runs September 22 to 23, 2027, in Cologne, Germany, and covers the whole digital advertising world, not paid search specifically. A performance marketer who has been says the main events are not worth it for this kind of work. The value, they say, sits in the private meetings booked around the main show.

Cannes Lions is a bigger jump, and a different buyer entirely. It runs June 21 to 25, 2027, in France, and it is built for creative awards, not performance results. One attendee describes it as a big sales hunt that runs through CMOs, platform executives and agency creative leads. That crowd buys big brand campaigns, not a $3,000 monthly ad account.

Social Media Marketing World is built for a different job entirely. It covers organic content strategy and community management. An agency owner asking whether it is worth it got mixed reviews about content quality, not paid traffic. Go if content and community are your service line; skip it if paid media is.

MozCon dropped its single flagship date for a roadshow format, and it was never a PPC room anyway. It now runs as one day stops in different cities instead of one big annual event, and its reputation is squarely SEO. One SEO practitioner on Reddit dismissed the format as unexciting beyond entry level content. Cross it off this list; it never belonged on it.

If you land a badge, this is what earns back the ticket

The sessions are the smallest part of what you are paying for. You are buying two or three days in a building with the people who buy from you or refer to you. Book that before you land.

Get the attendee list before you pack. B2B marketers on one thread say the attendee list thing isn't really gatekept, most people simply do not think to ask for it. A second thread agrees: find the list, then prioritize the people you genuinely want to meet.

Work the floor, not the stage. Sessions get summarised online within a week. The conversations in the hallway and at the after parties do not. Agency owners scaling up their client list say the same network keeps paying off long after the trip ends. Pick one session a day and give the rest of your time to the people you came to meet.

Follow up before the badge is off your desk. A sales thread on trade show leads is direct about it: send a note the same day, referencing the actual conversation, while it is still fresh on both sides.

Judge the trip by one number. Not badge scans, not business cards. One new client or one signed referral partner within thirty days means the trip earned its cost. Anything after that is a bonus, not the reason you booked the flight.

What to do about each thing you see

Things to stop doing

• Trusting a "best marketing conferences" list that puts Cannes Lions or DMEXCO next to Hero Conf. They are not built for the same buyer.
• Waiting for Traffic and Conversion Summit to come back. It will not.
• Booking the on site price when an early bird window was open months earlier.
• Treating MozCon as a PPC event because the name is familiar. It never was one.
• Skipping the attendee list because it feels like extra work before you have even landed.
• Flying home with no follow up sent that week. The window closes fast.

A planning checklist, by month

• Now: pick one event from the fork above, based on what you actually sell, not the biggest name.
• Three months out: buy the pass in the early bird window, and book the flight.
• Six weeks out: request or build the attendee list, and message ten people by name.
• Two weeks out: line up your case studies and one specific ask for each person on the list.
• The week of: one session a day, the hallway and after parties the rest of the time.
• The week after: one follow up per real conversation, sent the same week, with a specific next step.

The short version

• Hero Conf US: Sept 9 to 10, 2027, San Diego, from $500. PPC and paid social only.
• SMX Advanced: San Diego Mar 17 to 19, Boston Sept 20 to 22, 2027, from $1,445. SEO, PPC and AI together.
• These two are the ones PPC agencies keep naming back to back as the only large US events still worth it.
• State of Search: Oct 19 to 20, 2026, Grapevine TX, $299. The cheapest real option.
• Affiliate World Asia: Dec 9 to 10, 2026, Bangkok, from $599. For affiliates and cross border media buyers.
• LeadsCon: Apr 5 to 7, 2027, Las Vegas, from $999 to $2,999. For lead generation and pay per call.
• Hero Conf UK: Apr 15 to 16, 2027, Brighton, from £150. For European PPC and paid social work.
• Traffic and Conversion Summit is confirmed gone. DMEXCO, Cannes Lions, Social Media Marketing World and MozCon are real, but built for a different buyer.
• Get the attendee list, work the hallway, follow up the same week.

Read next

• Funnel Marketing Agency Conferences 2026 to 2027, for the VSL and funnel building crowd this guide deliberately does not cover.
• White Label Video Editing: What Agencies Actually Pay, for the per hour math behind running client video under your own name.
• Video Sales Letter: What a VSL Is, How It Is Built, and What the Edit Is Doing, for the format most of your paid traffic is probably sending clicks to.

Booking a badge is optional. Keeping up with the ad creative your new contacts are about to ask for is not. That is the gap we fill: your first video is free up to four editing hours, and agency work after that runs a flat $18 an hour.

Last reviewed 18 September 2026. Every date and badge price on this page is from the event's own registration page linked beside it, and every claim about what practitioners think is a real forum post, linked where it is used, both as read on that date.