Revealing Virtual Event Statistics for 2024

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. 

[Infographic] 10 Must Know Virtual Event statistics for 2022

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• 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)

• 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

Source : Deloitte

• 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

• 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)

• 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

_{Source : Skift}

• 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)