Zoom named Forrester Leader as virtual event differentiation shifts to AI

Zoom's entry into the Leaders quadrant in its first Forrester Wave participation signals that UCaaS providers can compete with dedicated event platforms when scalability and pricing transparency matter most. The report's central finding — that core streaming is now a hygiene factor — pressures every vendor in the category to demonstrate AI-driven post-event workflows and clean CRM data pipelines, not just broadcast reliability. For buyers, the practical question has shifted from 'can this platform run an event?' to 'what does it help us achieve after the event ends?' Watch whether Zoom's roadmap delivers on AI lead routing and insight generation before Cvent-ON24's combined data and integration depth widens the gap.

Forrester's own market analysis leading into this Wave, published as a landscape overview in Q1 2026 by analyst Conrad Mills on Forrester's blog, reinforces the report's central thesis. Mills wrote that vendors 'explicitly acknowledged' core event functionality has commoditized and that the primary buyer question is no longer whether a platform can run an event but 'what does the platform help us achieve once the live event is over?' The blog identified three AI capability clusters — content multiplication, event assistance, and insight/attribution — and noted that differentiation comes less from underlying LLMs and more from how AI is embedded into enterprise workflows.

The competitive landscape among the five Leaders has shifted materially. Cvent closed its acquisition of ON24 on April 1, 2026 (per BusinessWire), combining Cvent's in-person and hybrid event management with ON24's enterprise webinar platform and AI-powered engagement tools. The merged entity launched a LinkedIn integration in May 2026 (per Morningstar/BusinessWire) that routes ON24 first-party engagement data into LinkedIn audience targeting — a concrete example of the CRM and marketing ecosystem integration Forrester flagged as decisive. RainFocus, another Leader, received the highest possible scores in 22 of 31 criteria (per PR Newswire, June 2026), with Forrester citing its deep CRM/MAP/CDP integrations and unified global attendee profiles.

Zoom has been building toward this positioning through rapid product investment. Per Releasebot, Zoom Webinars & Events added AI-Driven Key Moments engagement analytics in February 2026, Company Insights for account-level attendee grouping in January 2026, and individual-stream Recording Studio in May 2026. Zoom's own June 23, 2026 announcement noted it received above-average customer feedback — a metric Forrester collected independently from platform users rather than from vendor-reported case studies.

The broader market supports continued investment. GII Research (citing The Business Research Company) sized the virtual event platform market at $16.28 billion in 2025, projected to reach $19.1 billion in 2026 and $36.63 billion by 2030 at a 17.7% CAGR, with growth attributed to AI-driven personalization and CRM integration demand.