Since 2020 the event industry has aggressively adopted virtual events. What started off as an alternative to live events during the 2020 pandemic, has now become a must have format for event professionals in the future. Virtual events continue to deliver better ROI, Higher lead generation and Better content. 

Virtual events are now a value creator to your marketing & top-of-the-line. 

Here is a collection of statistics to help with your marketing & event strategy for the upcoming year with internal stakeholders.Our team in collaboration with industry experts and research has collated the below data, facts & figure in the following key areas. 

Event Industry Trends

Event Professional’s Outlook

Virtual Event Platform & Feature Usage

Virtual Event Engagement

Event Industry Trends

• By 2028 global virtual event market could reach $500+ billion (Global news wire, 2021)

• 63% marketing leaders say they plan to conduct “the same number or more” virtual events in 2022. (Forrester , 2021) 

• 99% companies consider webinars critical to their marketing plan (Statista , 2022) 

• 81% percent of brand marketers expect post-pandemic experiential marketing budgets will match or exceed pre-pandemic levels. (Eventmarketer , 2021)

• Twitch is so dominant that it hosts 90% of world’s live stream content , followed by Youtube and facebook (Geekswire, 2020) 

• 79% of companies now expect to host events that include an online component even once in-person events resume (MarTech, 2021)

• 67% organisations say delivery tangible virtual event networking has been a challenge in 2021 (Forrester , 2021) 

• Top 3 challenges APAC region faced with virtual events were lack of engagement, tech issues and lack of knowledge with the format or tech (AMEX, 2022)

• 43% companies in North America have incorporated specific virtual & hybrid event policy  ,40% in Europe ; 49% in Central/S.America ; 56% in APAC (AMEX, 2022)

Event Professional’s Outlook

• 73% of B2B marketers say events are best for customer engagement. (Source: Demand Metric) 

• 87% Marketers consider leads generated by virtual events are a success (Markletic, 2021)  

• 50 % marketing executives are certain that all live events will have virtual livestream or on-demand from now on (Marketing Charts, 2020)

• Over 80% of event professionals were able to extend their audience reach with virtual events. (Bizzabo, 2020)

• 7 in 10 B2B Marketing professionals learn during pandemic tech tools for collaboration. Other top skills were Presenting in virtual event (57%), Remote coaching (28%) , Social media (23%) – (MarketingCharts)

• 71% event organizers believe the biggest challenge in 2022 will be to connect in-person and virtual audience (Markletic, 2021)  

• In 2021, 6 out of 10 organisers said their biggest challenges were lack of knowledge/experience with virtual tech & Technical issues (AMEX, 2022)

• 29% more non-marketing staff are involved in creating virtual events than pre-pandemic (Splash, 2020) 

Virtual Event Platform & Feature Usage

• In 2021, Following are the top 5 virtual event challenges globally (AMEX, 2022)
  • 37% – Technical issues
  • 30% – Lack of Engagement
  • 27% – Lack of knowledge/experience with the format
  • 17% – Poor attendance15%  – Limited budgets

• 76% marketers say email is the best channel to drive event registrations followed by social media (60%), Paid digital advertising (51%), B2B partnerships (51%) (Markletic, 2021)  

• 45% event organisers use polls, social wall & gamification to keep virtual attendees engaged during the event (AMEX, 2022). 30% delivered food & beverages to keep them engaged

• More than 80% virtual event organisers increased audience interaction using Polls during the event (Markletic, 2021)  

• An increase of 83% attendance when virtual events send email reminders and push notifications 1 day and 1 hour prior to the event (nunify, 2022)

• 87% organizers opt for virtual event platforms that provide sponsorship opportunities in their virtual booth features. (Markletic, 2021)  

• Maximum number of LIVE cameras on screen should be restricted to 5 (nunify, 2022). It is easier to manage mute, focus on speaker, presentations considering laptop & phone screen sizes 

• 30% of Business use an event app in virtual events (Markletic, 2021)  

• 91% of Event organisers allow virtual session sponsorship to boost revenue (Markletic, 2021)  

• Event organizers have seen a 320x increase in event analytics for post-event analysis and track ROI ((nunify, 2022)

• A meagre 10% of virtual event platform provide live stream from mobile app (Event app bible, 2021) 

Virtual Event Engagement

• Ideal duration for a virtual event session is 20 minutes, for keynote 35 minutes (nunify, 2022). Our data shows that unless you proactively engage the audience there is a droff of after this time

• 10 hours is average planning time for a small virtual event  (Vimeo , 2021) , compared to almost a month for an in-person event of same size

• Biggest annoyance of virtual events is poor connection (Markletic, 2021)  

• 3 out of 4 attendees had learning as a goal with virtual events compared to less than 8% for networking (Drift, 2021) 

• More attendees check in to virtual event compared to in-person event (Bizzabo, 2021)