Overview
- Webinar engagement is growing: Webinar attendees are staying for longer, more often, with a 7% increase in attendance on an average of 51 minutes. On-demand viewing accounts for 50% of all webinar attendees.
- Webinars and interactive tools influence buying decisions: Webinars are boosting demo bookings — and first-party data collection — through CTA clicks and other interactive tools like polls, downloads, surveys and more.
- Personalization and AI boost performance: Personalization and AI adoption boost performance, from higher registration and attendance rates to stronger conversion outcomes. Businesses using AI for promotion, content creation, and nurture flows achieve better engagement and participation.
The 2026 Digital Engagement Benchmarks Report is here, revealing everything there is to know about webinar performance over the past year. We’ve analyzed the extensive amount of data from our platform to produce up-to-date webinar statistics and uncover some fascinating insights.
This blog breaks down the key takeaways from the report. We’ll cover how webinars, virtual events, and content experiences performed in 2025 and what marketers need to be aware of when planning their webinar strategies for 2026.
2026 Webinar Engagement
The first key takeaway from our 2026 webinar benchmark report is that the medium’s capability as a powerful tool for engagement shows no sign of waning. From rising attendance to favored formats, here’s what we can learn from webinar engagement over the past year.
Webinars continue to fuel interest and engagement
Webinars have become a go-to tool for marketers wanting to deliver valuable content in an engaging format. The medium has proven itself effective in continuously fuelling interest among audiences, with the average number of attendees rising to 239 in 2024 – an 11% increase YOY.
The average webinar conversion rate of registrations to attendees was 60%. This highlights the effectiveness of webinars in attracting high-quality audiences who are genuinely interested in the topic.
Forty-nine minutes was the average duration of webinar engagement in 2025, further showcasing the format’s ability to attract interested participants and sustain their attention.
Average number of webinar attendees per quarter
Webinar attendance increased across every quarter of 2025 compared to the same periods in 2024. Q4 saw the biggest YOY change, with an average of 254 attendees per webinar, compared to 219 the previous year.
As demand for webinars continues to rise, marketers have an opportunity to capture and nurture high-intent audiences with educational and engaging content. By delivering targeted experiences and leveraging interactive features, marketers can not only attract more attendees but also drive conversions and long-term retention.
Most popular webinar viewing formats
Despite live webinars being the most popular format in 2025, with 67% of attendees joining live, on-demand formats also saw significant engagement. 43% of attendees chose to watch on-demand webinars, demonstrating the value of the ‘anywhere, anytime’ webinar experience.
The flexibility of on-demand webinars for audiences with busy schedules or time zone restraints continues to contribute to the format’s growing popularity. There has been a slow but steady increase in the proportion of attendees watching on-demand webinars, with a 1% rise each year from 2022 to 2025.
Making recordings available on-demand is one of the lowest cost, highest reward ways to maximize the value of webinar content.
Webinars As a Source of Information for Purchase Decisions
Webinars and on-demand content experiences play a key role in the buyer’s journey. Online resources such as these don’t just help educate and build awareness among audiences – they’re also vital for nurturing high-intent prospects into leads.
2025 saw buyers increasingly turning to webinars as a source of information for purchase decisions. Demo bookings rose by 73%, while there was a 49% increase in engagement with all calls-to-action (CTAs) per attendee.
Marketers also gained insights into attendee purchase intent in real-time, with in-webinar engagement metrics surging over the past year. Attendees were more deeply engaged with material, as demonstrated by a significant 18% increase in webinar channel engagement reactions per attendee.
Far from being mere learning experiences, though, webinars proved their effectiveness as powerful conversion tools that drive immediate action. Some of the stand-out stats from our webinar benchmarks report include a 4X increase in meeting bookings during webinars and a 51% increase in live chat with sales teams.
Real-time conversations can lead to quicker, more informed decision-making. The less friction buyers experience in their decision-making process, the more likely they are to continue on their path. This is why focusing on facilitating conversations as well as implementing standard CTAs can enhance the likelihood of closing a deal.
When it comes to on-demand content experiences, there’s still plenty marketers can do to nurture prospects without real-time interaction. Serving personalized content that’s relevant to their audience’s needs will help businesses capitalize on the increased appetite for on-demand content of all formats.
In 2025, content hubs acted as a strong source of buying signals for marketers to use in their strategies. The average number of contact us requests per hub rose by 9%, while demo requests increased by 73% on average.
Each content hub powered by the ON24 webinar platform saw an average 43% increase in requests for a pricing quote.
Overall, these stats highlight how marketers not offering on-demand options and optimizing conversions will see reduced results from their webinars and content experiences.
Audience Appetite for Rich Engagement Options Grows
The most successful webinars are those that offer rich experiences where attendees feel truly immersed. Interactive tools and advanced follow-up features are what separate the format from traditional online meetings, and utilizing these effectively will result in deeper audience engagement.
With each webinar producing over 300 individual interactions, they’re also a great way to generate valuable first-party data insights.
Webinar engagement by numbers
Average engagement across all webinars saw a slight increase in 2025. As a well-established format, the 18% rise indicates audiences’ continued preference for the interactivity that webinars offer.
Of the engagement options available to audiences, poll responses achieved the most interaction, with an average of 150 responses per webinar.
Per webinar, this was followed by 101 resource downloads, 69 certifications, 52 reactions, and 19 survey responses. The average number of interactions per attendee was 1.8.
On-demand webinars saw a higher increase in overall engagement than live formats. The engagement rate increased 7% YOY, which means engagement is rising faster than the shift towards on-demand viewing.
This highlights the importance of treating on-demand webinars as the same rich opportunities for interaction that live webinars are. Incorporating engagement features such as polls, surveys, and content suggestions will provide a continual source of first-party data that enhances audience insights.
Personalization Correlates with Significantly Improved Performance
Personalization is everything in modern digital marketing, as audiences look for experiences that are tailored to their needs and preferences. This is as true for webinars as any medium, with our data showing that performance from personalized digital experiences can rise by up to 4X YOY.
Improvements in performance can be seen throughout the funnel when personalization is used effectively. The average number of CTA clicks from personalized landing pages increased by 49% in 2025, while the same period saw a 25% increase in resource downloads, and 95% on-demand webinar views per hub.
Businesses using personalization see stronger performance
Businesses using personalization saw an uplift across a range of metrics when compared to those that hadn’t incorporated personalization into their nurture strategies.
The average number of on-demand attendees jumped from 97 for businesses not using personalization to 125 for those that do — a 25% increase.
Tailored experiences also help drive attendees to take meaningful action. The conversion rate across CTAs with personalization was 118% higher than without.
AI and Automation Drive Significantly Better Results
The State of AI in B2B Marketing report found that B2B marketers using AI were 7X more likely to hit their goals than miss them. Along with the revelation that 87% of B2B marketers are already directly using or testing AI, it’s clear that businesses not utilizing these new technologies are at risk of falling behind the competition.
AI is seeing increased adoption for promoting and repurposing webinars
Our recent The State of AI in B2B Marketing report found that 63% of marketers who had implemented AI were using it for promotional content – the most popular use case.
The 2026 Webinar Benchmarks Report has uncovered similar findings. In 2025, there was a 37% increase in the use of our AI-powered Analytics and Content Engine feature for the purpose of creating derivative content from a single webinar.
These AI and webinar statistics demonstrate how AI has rapidly become an integral part of the webinar production process. Although we’ve highlighted the role it plays both before and after the event, it’s also important to remember how it can be used to enhance attendee experience during the event through technologies like AI-powered chatbots.
Engagement with AI-generated content
One of the most unexpected revelations from the data we analyzed is that engagement with AI-generated content is rising faster than its creation.
Between Q1 and Q4 2024, the number of articles produced with the help of AI rose by 2.8X. During the same period, engagement with AI-generated written content increased by more than 7X.
What we can learn from these stats is that despite the concerns some may have, AI-generated content isn’t just about scaling up production. It can also be of a high enough quality to deliver value to audiences and sustain their attention.
Nurture pages
Businesses using the ON24 platform’s automated nurture sequences saw better performance than those that were not. These sequences involve sending links to the webinar recording and other on-demand content to registrees after the event has finished.
When nurture pages were used, the average length of attendance experienced a 10% uplift from 48 minutes to 53 minutes. The average number of attendees rose from 208 to 275 (32%), and the number of on-demand attendees increased from 89 to 151 (69%).
