Virtual events are here to stay: 84% of respondents state they would always like to have the option to attend any event as a virtual/remote participant

Kaltura , the Video Experience Cloud, published the report, The State of Virtual Events 2022, assessing the growth and evolution of the industry over the past year and predicting what it will look like in the future. The study was undertaken to better understand the goals, desires, and priorities of both event organizers and attendees from across a wide range of industries. Renan Gutman, EVP Product, Kaltura, will be presenting the key insights from the report and lessons for marketers at the upcoming Virtually Live! by Kaltura conference on November 9.

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Unsurprisingly, virtual events were widely used in 2021, with 92% of organizers shifting away from physical. The more surprising finding from the report, however, is that these digital events appear to be here to stay with 94% of organizers planning a virtual event in 2022, and 48% planning more virtual events in 2022 than in 2021. The main reason for the predicted continuation? Organizers are seeing greater ROI and engagement from virtual events. Attendees are happy as well, with 93% reporting that they feel that companies have done a good job with the transition from in-person to online.

“As organizations factor digital events into their longer-term plans, we wanted to better understand what is driving attendee engagement and motivating event organizers,” said Renan Gutman, EVP Product, Kaltura. “Virtual events don’t exist in a silo, they are part of the entire marketing funnel. It took time to make the shift, but the benefits have quickly become clear, and as a result, nearly half of organizations plan to host more digital events next year.”

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Other key findings in the report include:

• Content drives attendance and engagement. While attendees largely go to in-person events to build relationships (39%), the top goal for virtual events is learning about the company/product (36%) and general education (36%).
• Prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, only 45% of people had attended a virtual event. After the start of the pandemic, that number has increased by over 93% to 87%.
• 73% of attendees are satisfied with the experience they had at virtual events, despite many companies creating events on the fly in challenging circumstances, and 93% of attendees feel companies have done a good job with the transition from in-person to online.
• 90% of organizers believe that all large-scale events will be hybrid or virtual by 2023.
• 84% of attendees say they would always like to have the option to attend any event as a virtual/remote attendee.

Methodology – The survey was conducted in Q3 2021, and respondents were split into two categories – organizers or attendees. Over 250 respondents were key employees from companies who had organized at least one large-scale virtual event over the past 18 months. This included CMOs, senior marketing executives, as well as event managers and directors from companies ranging from 500 to more than 10,000 employees. An additional 1,000 respondents were attendees of digital events from the U.S. and U.K. who had gone to at least one large-scale virtual event over the past 18 months.