<p>I don't really think this is a good idea in case of scientific conferences -- they are very different from business ones. First of all, they are effectively free (buy a laptop, you'll find Windows on it; work for an academia, they'll sent you to a conference for time to time), so we treat them mostly as an occasion to meet people and free food. Sponsored talks are treated as yadda yadda and in short real talk it is usually very hard to go off-topic. Backstage promotion seems a better option, but it is risky -- I doubt someone would honestly commit to do this for money. Final option is to support the conference itself -- it could be reasonably cheap in a scenario of few small conferences but I don't think it will generate significantly bigger traffic increase that we currently get organically. </p>
