OnZoom Brings Search & Event Payments To Zoom

Zoom has announced plans to move into the online events space.

Its new offering, OnZoom, will be their online event marketplace and will allow users to buy passes to classes, events and activities.

The pandemic has been good to Zoom, which blew the competition out of the water and spawned a new verb in the process.

Zoom's user base has mushroomed, with 300+ million daily Zoom meeting participants, and now its making moves to be an event destination as well as providing the online infrastructure.

OnZoom could be a low-cost gamble that pays off big. It's currently available in beta mode for US users.

Zoom isn't yet taking a cut on event sales in 2020 but will have a platform fee in 2021. What that fee will be is yet to be disclosed.

The launch of OnZoom position Zoom between the video call market and platforms like Twitch or YouTube that enable creators to make money from live streaming.

Joseph Evans, Head of Technology, Enders Analysis via BBC

"People are doing reiki sessions online, yoga online, medical consultations over video calls.

That has got people very excited about the idea of being able to scale up what were events that were dependent on how many people you could get through your door.

"Now people are thinking that maybe the market for this is actually a lot bigger."

One of the launch partners is WW, formerly Weight Watchers, and will use the platform to facilitate their workshops in the UK.

An Online Events One-stop Shop

OnZoom provides an extra option for revenue growth for event marketers, as well as a way to maintain and build customer relationships during periods where they might not be able to otherwise. Users will also be able to use this to grow business and expand reach into more audiences thanks to the search function within the OnZoom platform.

Marketers organising events on Zoom will need a paid account, but anyone can watch them. Brands and content creators will need to select an account level, which will mean they can have up to 100 or 1000 attendees.

OnZoom will accept payment using PayPal or credit cards, but more payment options are being worked on and will be available in the future.

Zoom has also announced Zapps; the range of integrated apps that will be available to use from within Zoom, bringing a vast array of new functionality.

Zapps are designed to add productivity and allow for the easier collection of information at all stages of the meeting.

"Zapps help surface all the applications you need to be productive and enable the free flow of information between teams before, during, and after the meeting.

"Think of Zapps as an app store right where you need it most — in a Zoom meeting, chat, webinar, phone call, and even your contacts directory."

There are currently 35 companies building apps for integration into Zoom.

They are: Asana, Atlassian, Box, Cameo, Chorus, Coda, Coursera, Docket, Dot Collector, Dropbox, Gong, Hubspot, Kahoot, Kaltura, LoomieLive, LucidSpark, Miro, Mural, PagerDuty, Pitch, Remix Labs, Rev, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Slido, Superhuman, SurveyMonkey, Thrive Global, Unsplash, Woven, Wrike, WW, and Zendesk.

However, there's been no official word on when they will be available.

Fight For Your Right To Online Events 

Facebook will also be looking on with interest, having recently made moves into this area of the market.

Back in August, Facebook announced an update allowing Page owners to create an online event, set a price, promote the event, collect payment and host the event within Facebook.

LinkedIn is also trying to get a slice of the pie and has launched its own events platform. LinkedIn Events has become more visible on the platform and now appears on the left-hand side of your Page's navigation tab.

Your followers and visitors will be able to find events they care about more quickly, but LinkedIn is yet to introduce an eCommerce angle or third-party payment integration. On top of this, there are, as yet, no event marketing ad options within LinkedIn.

Lastly, OnZoom is not going to be good news for Eventbrite, already feeling the pain of the pandemic, and that's not going to end any time soon.

Online events do not monetise as well as physical ones and with Zoom flexing its muscle in this space (along with Facebook and eventually LinkedIn) Eventbrite could easily be crowded out of the market.

Further expected lockdowns through winter in the Northern Hemisphere will only increase Eventbrite's woes. While the cool kids at Zoom kickback over virtual Piña Colada.

In fact, given its struggles pivoting from offline events to online, Eventbrite might even make for a sweet acquisition target for Zoom or Facebook.