ON24, a provider of internet broacasting solutions, today issued a report whose aim is to quantify the use of internet broadcasting (also known as "webcasting") during the past year and "uncover webcasting trends for business-to-business (B2B) publishers."

ON24 Insider on Publishing is based on data collected among the users of ON24 Webcasting Platform and highlights all webcasting trends and attendee behaviors from first half 2005 to first 2006. The report determined that in the first half of 2006, publishers planned, scheduled and delivered 33.29% more webcasts than they did in 2005.

Live webcasts are audio or video streamed events held on a specific day and time, while on-demand webcasts are streamed only upon request anywhere, anytime. The impressive news is that, according to this report, in 2006 live webcasts outperformed on-demand webcasts with attendee viewing times averaging 49 minutes versus 34 minutes respectively.

Moreover, video webcasts (which are events streamed with video) experienced significant growth in the average number of registrants and attendees per event over this period.

Let's now discover which are the key findings of the ON24 Insider report:

The growth of webcasting from 2005 to 2006

The ON24 report confirmed that the users of the ON24 platform consider webcasting an effective communication tool, thanks also to the diffusion of broadband Internet connection which makes it easier for audiences to view webcasts.

Here is what the report says:

"From 2005 to 2006, the number of webcasts produced by publishers on ON24 webcasting platform increased by 33.29%. Additionally, publishers seem to prefer live webcasts over on-demand webcasts, since in 2006, 85.24% of all webcasts produced by publishers were live webcasts."

Audio and video webcasts, in particular, have grown a lot: publishers produced 31.81% more audio webcasts and 43.96% more video webcasts in 2006 over 2005.

Webcasts turned out to help publishers a lot, when it comes to hold attendee's attention for an extended period of time: in 2006 the average minutes that attendees dedicated to watching webcasts was 39 minutes and above 55% of attendees have become registrants.

According to the report, attendees viewed live webcasts for 49 minutes in 2006 versus 34 minutes for on-demand webcasts. This may indicate that a live webcast is a much more effective way to deliver complex messages. In addition, oroviding an archive of a live webcast increased the percentage of attendees who viewed that content to nearly 46%.

Video webcasts have increased very rapidly, perhaps due also to the popularity of consumer videos and wider availability of broadband. From 2005 to 2006, video webcasts attracted an average of 45-47% more registrants and attendees, while audio webcasts decreased by about 3% in registrants and 9% in attendees over the same period of time.

Interactive features, such as polls and surveys, are likely to provide invaluable information to publishers and sponsors regarding attendees, while enabling attendees to interact with presenters. The ON24 report says that publishers incorporated interactive features in all webcasts, and although response rates to polls and surveys for all webcasts fell from 31% 2005 to 22% 2006, live and audio webcasts demonstrated increased participation levels during this same period.

User access and technology

The On24 report editors have been able to determine the language of most of the attendees and the platform and browsers they use to view webcasts. The result is that the major part of attendees are from native-English speaking countries, as publishers are producing a majority of webcasts in English.

To give some numbers, we can say that most attendees originated from United States (88%), Canada (7%), Europe (UK & Germany, 3%) and India (2%).

Regarding the most popular operative systems and browsers among attendees, Windows and Internet Explorer are dominant, thus reflecting a worldwide trend. In facts, 98% of computers ran Windows based operating systems. Attendees are accessing webcasts with MS IE 7.0 (2%), Firefox (16%) and MS IE 6.0 (82%).

Conclusions

As we have previously said, this report published by ON24 analyzes the current use of webcasting among the users of the ON24 platform. We cannot confirm that the report by ON24 reflects an overall trend of the online publishing world, but the information that it provides are certainly a valuable contribution.

In particular, it is interesting to see how the growth of video webcasts highlighted by this report witnesses the overall pupularity that internet video publishing and broadcasting has acquired during the last year.

Interaction between viewers and publishers is another key finding of this report: webcasts viewers are very enticed by the possibility to interact with publishers and vice versa, thus making online events broadcasting a powerful system for creating stronger connections via the Internet.

About ON24 Insider

According to a press release by ON24, the present report on Webcasting is the first issue of the ON24 Insider series. The ON24 Insider is issued on a biannual basis, and it is a series of reports by ON24 Inc. that evaluates the key webcasting factors required for producing effective webcasting programs while analyzing and commenting emerging webcasting trends.