VS Insights

ZOOM Extensions to Reach Large Audiences up to 100,000+

The world has changed in the last month and many global corporations, organizations, educational institutions and others are looking for ways to utilize Zoom to reach an extra large audience of viewers (>1000). As many organizations have discovered, Zoom is simple to use to capture and share a presentation, but Zoom is not always equipped to manage over 1000 simultaneous viewers.

Many people in the world are now familiar with Zoom, a great tool for web conferencing with a group of less than 1000 people. But now corporations and organizations are asking, can I use Zoom to broadcast to larger groups of 1000, 2000, or 10,000 people. These large events may be CEO town halls to all employees, virtual trade shows or events replacing physical events, or even the upcoming surge of virtual college and high school graduations.

Admittedly, Zoom was not designed to handle the security, scale and management of large broadcasting events. The good news is there are several solutions for using Zoom to manage presenters, but leveraging other scalable and secure video streaming solutions to reach a much larger audience. Below are three valid options for extending Zoom to reach a larger audience.

1. Zoom Extended via Facebook or YouTube Live – open access, lack of control
2. Zoom Extended via Veriskope Amplify Solutions – scale, proven, protected
3. Zoom Extended via a Virtual Cloud Streaming Solution – scalable and secure (requires development)

Option 1 – Zoom Extended via Facebook or YouTube Live

Zoom makes it easy to extend a Zoom conference to YouTube (YT) or Facebook (FB). With a few clicks and URL copy and paste, event producers can utilize YouTube or Facebook to broadcast an event. In addition to easy setup, both YouTube and Facebook can scale automatically to handle a large number of simultaneous users/viewers.

While these services are easy to get setup, they lack the ability to customise the user interface with a company’s or event’s brand. Additionally these systems are focused on video delivery and have limited tools for managing large group questions and answers integrated with Zoom presenters.

One other important limitation of YT and FB is you do not have the ability to manage an invite list or securely allow access to video content. If you are trying to broadcast to a select group of users there is no way to limit access. All broadcasts are open to anyone and everyone to view.

If cost is your concern, then one benefit of YT and FB is that the overall cost to set up, manage and deliver video from large events to 1000s of people is very inexpensive.  Both YT and FB are willing to give away video streaming in return for capturing the personal usage data of your event participants.

Proven Live Streaming Scalability – Yes
Access Control/ Password Protected Secure Broadcast – No
Cost – Low
Technical Setup – Easy
UI/ UX Customization – Not Available

Option 2 – Zoom Extended via Veriskope Amplify™ for ZOOM Solution

Veriskope has developed a new solution called Amplify™ for ZOOM that allows users to easily extend the reach of Zoom to thousands or tens of thousands of users. Working with leading CDNs and cloud providers, Veriskope Amplify is similar to YouTube and Facebook, in that an event producer can quickly extend the streaming capabilities of Zoom for a large extended audience. Veriskope utilizes the proven, highly scalable Adobe Media Server for backend streaming management.
Link to Veriskope Amplify for ZOOM >

Additionally, Veriskope Amplify for ZOOM allows event producers to deliver video in a custom experience that is branded and unique to the event—the content is not restricted to the YT or FB playback windows. Veriskope Amplify for ZOOM also has its own question and answer system to let thousands of viewers participate by asking text-based questions, which are then managed by a moderator and presented to speakers/presenters.

The Veriskope Amplify for ZOOM solution also has the ability to set up a per event authorization to control who has access to the live video stream and UI/UX of the virtual event. This access control feature is separate from Zoom and more securely controls and manages who can access and view the live video stream.

Since the Veriskope Amplify for ZOOM system is already specifically designed to support Zoom, the setup and management costs are minimized. Total costs are based on the total number of concurrent streams (related to server usage) for an event.

Proven Live Streaming Scalability – Yes
Access Control/ Password Protected Secure Broadcast – Yes
Cost – Moderate
Technical Setup – Moderate
UI/ UX Customization – Yes

Option 3 – Zoom Extended via a Cloud Streaming Provider

Another option for a large event or series of events is building your own event streaming solution with partners such as AWS, Google or Limelight CDN. Cloud-based video streaming solutions have become more common than they were just five years ago. All major cloud providers now offer some level of video streaming services.

If an event producer or extended team is familiar with video streaming, this can be a good option to setting up an extension to Zoom. Once again, it is somewhat easy to connect Zoom via RTMP to a cloud streaming solution.

Once connected to a cloud streaming solution, the event producer will need to build any additional components that are desired. This may include a question and answer system, secure access control and/or a uniquely branded UI/UX for the event. Almost anything is possible in this option and up to the event producer and their software development team.

>As for cost, the overall project setup and development costs are likely to be much higher than option 1 or 2, potentially in the range of $20,000-$50,000, but then ongoing streaming costs might be slightly lower. If you are an organization or corporation that will be streaming many large events over the course of a year or several years, then a custom solution to extend Zoom may be a cost effective option if the up front development costs can be distributed across several events.

Proven Live Streaming Scalability – Yes
Access Control/ Password Protected Secure Broadcast – Optional
Cost – High
Technical Setup – Complex
UI/ UX Customization – Yes

**ZOOM is a trademark of Zoom Video Communications, Inc.