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Innovation Blog

The Webinar Boom of 2020: Statistics & Data Points

Man attending a webinar on his laptop from home.

During the lockdown, did it seem like life was becoming one big webinar?

As we have had to substitute online meetings for in-person events, we started using webinars for occasions as diverse as elementary school lessons to trade shows. That may have caused us to lose focus on the original reason for webinars: a geographically-dispersed audience interested in a given topic, who want to learn something from an expert on the subject.

It has been difficult to get up-to-date statistics on this boom in webinars. Maybe that’s because webinar companies have been so swamped with demand that they haven’t had time to blog about it.  However, there are a few data points that we can look at:

  • Since the pandemic has started, Babcox Media has set new company records for the most registrants and the highest attendance rates for the webinars we’ve produced.
  • On24, our webinar host, said that in March 2020 the number of webinars they’ve produced went up 330% compared to March 2019.
  • Is there a sweet spot for scheduling your webinars? Lots of evidence points to Wednesdays and Thursdays as the most popular days, with 2:00 pm Eastern/11:00 am Pacific time being the most popular time.  But with the huge surge in demand, webinars are being scheduled throughout the day, and every day of the week. In 2019, 58% of webinars were held on Wednesday or Thursday. So far in 2020, Wednesday and Thursdays only make up 41% of the volume, because of all the new demand that is spilling over to other days of the week, according to On24.
  • ClickMeeting, another webinar provider, reports that the number of webinars on their platform are up over 375% compared to a standard week before the pandemic. And the number of people attending those seminars is up 560%.
  • Comscore estimates that in May 2019, 9.9% of the total U.S. Internet audience was using collaboration tools such as Zoom and Teams. In May 2020, the share using collaboration tools had grown to 41% of the total Internet audience.

Even as conditions ease, demand for webinars should stay strong. There are some natural advantages to using them:

  • They make geography irrelevant as you can talk to people spread out around the world.
  • You can easily capture user data through the registration process. That data can be converted into leads.
  • You can easily promote yourself as a thought leader.

Want to host a webinar? It doesn’t matter if you already have a topic and presenters in mind, or if you need help creating an idea from scratch. Our team of experts makes it easy. Learn more about Babcox webinars and contact us today to get started.


Bruce Kratofil has been the Audience Insights Manager at Babcox Media since 2017. Prior to that, he was the Market Strategy and Research Manager at The Plain Dealer, in Cleveland, Ohio.

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