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 & webinars 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
[Infographic] 10 Must Know Virtual Event statistics for 2022
Event Industry Trends
- 64% meeting & event professional say overall budgets have increased in 2022 and over 80% have in-person component back (Amex, 2022)
- 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)
- 90% events have already adopted e-tickets since 2020 (Eventbrite, 2020)
- 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)
- Almost 83% of organizations have event sustainability on top of their mind in 2022 while planning any type of event or meeting (AMEX, 2022)
- 57% companies globally have mandated employee training on climate change best practices yet over 1/3rd haven’t implemented ‘needle-moving’ actions
- 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)
- Top 4 policies according to AMEX event professionals in 2022 ensure are clearly listed are
- Safety & Security
- Virtual & Hybrid specific policies
- Health & Welness
- Meeting ROI
Virtual Event Tech Statistics
- Less than 25% events will be fully online in 2022, 28.3% will be Hybrid events (Skift , 2022)
- 41% event organizers use Number of minutes watched as the primary event ROI to track virtual event success ; This is followed by participation in gamification (27%), Number of chat messages (21%) and social media mentions (12%) (EventMB, 2022)
- 73% event professionals are more comfortable with technology in 2022 vs 61% in 2021 (Amex Meetings, 2022)
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
- Keeping audience engaged in virtual event is much harder than in person . Typical screen fatigue in virtual event is at 30 minutes vs almost 45% audience in person was engaged in person for over 60 minutes
- 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)
