Organising and conducting online webinars and conferences is a trend that has been on the rise throughout the last decade. COVID 19 outbreak has changed the entire landscape and brought about a drastic change and growth in the technology used for webinars. Many companies and educational institutions had to make adjustments to the way business is conducted by moving to online platforms.

Today we will look at some of the major questions to get a deeper understanding of the evolution and exponential growth of Webinars and Video-conferencing in COVID times.

1. How has the pandemic increased the number of webinars and attendees?

Coronavirus situation was growing grim in February 2020. It led to the cancellation of business conferences around the world or moving them online by many companies. With the enforcement of lockdown in most parts of the world in March 2020, we had to adjust to the new way of life- a life where work, as well as education, had to move online. There was an urgent need to find technological solutions for the digitalization of education and business activities. Webinars and video-conferencing become a new reality. The numbers grew so big that they couldn’t be matched to any data in the past. A report shared by Clickmeeting showed that the number of webinars had increased from 59,425 in March 2019 to 299,906 events in March 2020 which are roughly about 1,919 webinars per day to 7,908 webinars in a day in March 2020and the number of attendees grew from 870,579 in March 2019 to 3,203,034 in March 2020.

2. What countries have been most active in organising online events?

With the lockdown in place, some countries exceeded 100 per cent growth in online events in comparison to March 2019. Poland led the way in Europe with the increase in events by 1156 per cent followed by Greece which witnessed an increase of 868 percent, Germany with 519 percent, and France with 423 percent. A marginal growth was seen both in Russia and the USA which was 19 percent and 39 percent respectively. These numbers increased traffic and grew the volume of webinars thereby requiring growth and development of infrastructure.

3. What webinar tools have witnessed a drastic rise in popularity?

COVID 19 brought with it many opportunities for the companies hosting webinars.

For the system to support growth the platform was witnessing, the application had to be optimized, the server infrastructure needs enhanced along with file storage and increase in bandwidth for streaming and recording events. A strong customer support team was needed to support people who had never used the platform and for education sector and businesses who had to move to using the platform.

Some important numbers shared by clickmeeting

• Number of webinars hosted per week increased by 375 percent in comparison to pre pandemic time.
• Number of attendees grew by 560 percent
• Number of files shared through presentations increased by 619 percent
• Webinar recordings saw an increase by 190 percent.

4. Which industries do the companies and organizations belong that have included webinars as a part of daily activities?

There are many companies and organizations that have now moved to webinars as a part of the daily routine. To get a better understanding of the growth that the webinar business has experienced post COVID, it is important to get an insight into what industries do these companies and organization belong to.

• Education- was the most impacted sector right from the beginning of the pandemic as all the schools and universities had shut down. It was the leading category which adopted webinars as a daily routine along with online courses and training sessions.
• Healthcare- the second sector to follow was healthcare as hospitals shifted to online communication and telemedicine as an alternate for clinic visits.
• IT sector- the IT sector had already switched to webinars and remote working earlier.

Some of the other industries that moved to webinars were

• Consulting services
• Government and State institutions
• Banking and Finance
• Telecommunication
• Manufacturing, Construction, NGOs

5. What and how have the business goals of webinar organizers evolved?

• Increase in business meetings and project collaboration-webinars and business meetings online are not a new concept and has been prevalent in the past as well. The pandemic strengthened their role in holding business meetings amongst teams, branches located in various locations, and for project collaborations.
• Rise in Product demos and lead generation-product demos are sales tools that have helped many organizations by redirecting the attendees to a landing page with the purchase form has seen a rise in numbers since the onset of the pandemic. Similar has been the case for selling products and services through sales pitch seminars that have helped in customer acquisition and lead generation.
• Growth of Education and training– e-learning has been growing steadily and so has the professional training sessions which saw a rise not just for businesses but also for communicating with customers at every stage of the customer journey.
• Employee onboarding and training– another area that has done well during the pandemic is training and onboarding employees.
• Virtual conferences and panellist discussion– the only alternative left with organizers after cancelling events was to run them virtually. Virtual conferences and events have been on a rise.

6. Will the current webinar hosts plan to continue running webinars after the pandemic is over?

With all that has previously been stated in this article, COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst for the increase in demand for webinars. In a survey conducted by clickmeeting, 83 percent of the respondents stated that they will be using webinars with easing of lockdown and social distancing.  Webinars hosts will continue this trend in the future even after the pandemic is over.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world completely from the way we live our lives to the way we conduct business and learn. It has triggered a huge demand for Webinars and Video-conferencing. Webinars have become an educational and business tool. The map of the webinar activity has completely transformed with countries showing huge development of the platform. With the majority of people and organizations realising the benefits and cost-effectiveness of webinars, it is a trend that is here to stay.