Con Sales vs. Add'l Advertising

[Veritas Games]

Which is a better investment for game publishers, going to cons, like Gen Con, or spending the money on more advertising?

Does the answer depend on whether you are attending a retailer-oriented convention or a player-oriented convention?

It just seems like you have to sell hundreds of units of smaller games to pay for booth prices.

We will likely have our first CCG out in the winter of 2005, and we are planning on attending cons to demo it and have some tournaments.  It seems to get to a major con, by booth space, hotel, etc. costs about $2,000+.  Even assuming $7.00 profit per deck for direct sales, that looks like we need to clear 300+ deck sales over a weekend just to make ends meet.

Are big cons loss leaders if you have your own booth?

Or do the sales make up for it.  I am not into attending cons myself, so I have no bloody idea of whether a licensed product sells dozens of copies or hundreds of copies.