Webinar Wire

Web Conferencing Survey Results

Posted by Ken Molay February 27 2008 1:15 PM EDT

I have completed my open survey of web conferencing technology providers and written up an analysis of results. The complete report is available for download from the Webinar Success website at www.wsuccess.com/download/survey.doc

I had been hoping to use the survey as a way to get a broad view into general web conferencing usage patterns and volumes across the industry. Unfortunately we had no participation from four of the largest conferencing technology providers, so a lot of important data is missing from the results. There is still no valid estimate on the total number of web conferences produced by individuals and businesses.

But the companies that did participate gave a great insight into web conferencing trends and patterns. We had inputs from very small startups, medium size providers, and very large market leaders. Some companies concentrate on niche applications and audiences, while others work with a wide cross-section of web conferencing applications.

In each survey question there were outlying answers at the far ends of the spectrum, but averages passed the "red face test" and matched my intuition and anecdotal observations. I think this is a good indicator of general usage characteristics. I make no claims, however, for statistical validity of my methods or of the data.

Here are some highlights from the results to whet your interest.

The most common uses of web conferencing (in order) were for education/training, sales presentations/demos, and marketing/PR/lead generation. Small group meetings represented significantly less usage and came in just behind employee communications as an application area. These results might have been different if Citrix had participated in the survey, since their GoToMeeting software gets a lot of use for smaller collaborative sessions.

The average audience size on a structured webinar or webcast event was estimated to be 86, with a wide variance. The largest reported audience for a structured event was reported at 25,000. Most of these events require advance registration, are recorded, and are free to attendees.

Collaborative small group meetings averaged an audience size of 8 people. Very few require registration or payment to attend, and less than one quarter are recorded.

On-demand recordings were estimated to get about 400 views each on average, with a huge variance. Most require registration, few require payment to view, and just under one-third are downloaded and distributed offline. Online recordings are hosted for seven months on average.

I invite you to take a look at the detailed results in the report. Thank you to all the companies who took the time and effort to provide data.