The key to a successful webcast is having engaging content that resonates with a target audience and media, Salomon-Lee adds.

A traditional webcast may best present targeted topics or standard desktop procedures for technical products. But a video webcast can enhance the authenticity of an executive announcement or a response to a crisis situation, Salomon-Lee says.

"Having live streaming video and responding to questions in a live format has a better impact on how you're presenting yourself toward your audience," she adds.

"...seen revenues grow more than 50 percent year over year, from $160,000 last year to an expected total of $250,000 this year. All of his group's Webinars are live and available on-demand afterwards."

ON24's Sharat added that the popularity of video has continued to increase over the past year. "Video and rich media definitely helps with the level of engagement that viewers have with your brand, company and message," Sharat said. "Over the past couple of years, we have seen video steadily increase in terms of the number of registrants and attendees. We also believe that Flash will further enhance the viewing experience and take webinars to the next level. This enables viewers to attend webinars regardless of their operating system, while enabling us to provide more interactivity. The possibilities are limitless and we're looking forward to exploring them with our customers."

Webcasting provided EPA with a way to be more interactive with its audience, taking and answering questions, Singelis said. "Just giving them a thick guidance document doesn't allow for that."

The agency hasn't documented the savings from its Webcasting program, but "you could easily imagine that the savings are pretty substantial" in travel costs and staff time, Singelis said.

EPA averages about 1,400 participants per Webcast, although that number has been as high as 5,000.

San Francisco's ON24 bases its lead generation system on Webcasting and "rich media"-basically, anything not in paper format. "Webcasting is one of the most effective vehicles for producing cost-effective leads," says Kim Ryden, director of lead generation for ON24. "You can get your message across while maintaining your company's brand and generating leads and information that can be archived through our Insight24 system."

We are seeing more demand for a suite of products: webcasts, podcasts, "bannercasts," virtual shows. All of these are registration products. You have to have strong reporting because you have to show ROI to the customer. Enterprise customers and publishers are looking for one vendor who can be integrated into their systems.

Clearly determine your goals and measure against these to better track conversions and measure ROI.

Mimosa Systems, an information management solutions company, works with virtual event producer ON24 to create about a dozen webinars a year, focusing on lead generation. "Awareness is a byproduct of that," said Sarah Howard, senior campaign manager and acting director of corporate marketing at the start-up company. She recommends testing extensively to get the kind of lead results desired. "Do several of them and really play with it," she said.

Jerry Skurla, VP-marketing at Bradford Networks, said webcasts are helping the start-up security company expand out of its vertical market. "I do as much Web as I can," he said. "It's [about] awareness and leads. We're a new company, and we want the world to know about us."

There are at least three key benefits of Webcasting.

First, more and more companies are beginning to scrutinize travel and find ways to reduce costs. This impacts how organizations plan and hold internal events, such as in-person training, company-wide meetings, road shows and more. Webcasting provides organizations an alternative to traveling to one location and holding that event. It saves companies money while reducing travel.

Webcasting is a technology that has green benefits. In 2008, companies will begin implementing environmental and sustainability mandates. My position is that as part of a larger strategy, Webcasting reduces travel and the amount of resources consumed, such as eliminating the need for printed presentation. Webcasting is a technology that can be implemented by companies today with immediate benefits.

From a sales and marketing perspective, Webcasting is a powerful solution for lead generation efforts. Webcasting is the only medium that enables companies to communicate a specific message for over 40 minutes to a targeted audience. And when combined with lead scoring capabilities, Webcasting provides sales and marketing organizations with pre-screened, qualified sales leads.

The key is that Rain Today created content that had pass-along value.

One example of that is the webinar series spawned by the report by ON24. They invited all of the authors to turn their articles into webcasts and began in January, providing two webcasts each month.

Nelson agrees that content is key to a webinar's success. "A successful program is all in execution, the right content, the right time frame and reminding the audience. It's a set of rules that really works. In the end, people will show up and attend if it is a good show," he says.

Nelson believes that webinars will eventually spawn community chat pages and social networks. Virtual trade shows are already starting to pop up, putting the best elements of trade shows online, allowing vendors and attendees to congregate on the Web, often through a publisher's Web site.
"I don't think there is a b-to-b publisher that we've talked to that isn't thinking about doing webinars-because they work, they've been tested and can produce a nice revenue stream," says Nelson.

"It has been a great phenomenon from our point of view, in terms of ability to bring some real substance to the Web site and some interactive tools. Our companywide revenue mix has a much healthier trajectory from the online products," says Bazzy.