Why One-Dimensional Webinars are Failing Modern Marketers

Marketers don’t need another one-off event. They need campaigns. 

For years, the default webinar playbook has looked the same: set up a registration page, host a live event, send a recording. The box is checked, the program moves on.

That model made sense when B2B marketing was measured by registrations and attendance. But modern buyers don’t measure value by showing up — they self-educate, compare vendors on their own terms, and expect continuous engagement throughout their journey. They want personalized content that proves you understand their specific challenges.

A one-off webinar can’t keep pace with that reality. It’s an outdated model, and it’s costing marketers pipeline.

Yet many teams are still stuck with platforms that force them into this cycle — tools that are either too lightweight to scale beyond basic registration, too complex for lean teams to manage effectively, or too one-dimensional to evolve beyond attendance metrics.

Marketers don’t need more one-off events or one-dimensional tools. They need campaigns that scale.

The breaking point: too much pressure, too few resources

Marketing leaders face mounting pressure to deliver pipeline growth with constrained resources, while practitioners are expected to launch campaigns faster than ever, often without dedicated operations support. 

Basic webinar platforms offer quick setup but leave you stranded when it comes to follow-up. Enterprise systems promise comprehensive features but require months of implementation and specialized expertise to manage.

Neither approach serves the commercial and mid-market teams who need both speed and sophistication. This is why so many promising programs lose momentum after the live event ends. Marketers are forced to choose between tools that can’t keep up with their goals or platforms that demand more overhead than their teams can provide.

The cost isn’t just operational frustration. It’s missed opportunities, abandoned leads and pipeline that never materializes.

From one-off events to campaign engines

The shift modern marketers need is clear. Webinars can’t just occupy a slot on the content calendar — they have to become the foundation of integrated campaigns. The live event becomes the starting point, with engagement data and AI-generated content fueling weeks of personalized follow-up across every channel.

Consider how other marketing disciplines evolved. Email moved from one-off broadcasts to sophisticated automation sequences that deliver personalized experiences at scale. Content marketing shifted from standalone blog posts to integrated topic clusters that reinforce each other over time. Social media transformed from individual updates to coordinated campaigns that span platforms and formats.

Every major marketing channel made this evolution, except webinars. But AI has created an inflection point that makes campaign-style webinars operationally feasible, and the capabilities are transforming what’s possible:

Content multiplication: A single event can now generate blogs, video clips, nurture emails and social content automatically, extending engagement for weeks instead of ending it after sixty minutes.

Workflow orchestration: AI connects pre-event promotion, real-time engagement capture and post-event nurture into one seamless process that would have required dedicated teams to coordinate manually.

Intent data activation: Every poll response, chat interaction and download becomes actionable intelligence that can trigger personalized follow-ups and inform account-based approaches.

The technology finally exists to turn engagement signals into campaigns automatically.

The Platform Dilemma

Despite this market shift, most webinar platforms remain locked in the old paradigm. Teams are still forced to choose between:

• • Lightweight tools that handle registration and hosting but leave you to build campaigns manually
  • Enterprise platforms that offer advanced features but require significant implementation time and ongoing management expertise
  • One-dimensional solutions that optimize for attendance rather than campaign outcomes

None of these serve teams who need to move fast while building sophisticated engagement strategies. The result is programs that start strong but fade quickly, leads that go cold between touchpoints and marketing organizations that struggle to demonstrate clear pipeline attribution.

Introducing ON24 AI Propel+: Built for marketers driving campaigns

That’s why we built ON24 AI Propel+, a streamlined, AI-powered event solution built for today’s marketers who think in campaigns, not just events.

Where existing platforms make you choose between simplicity and sophistication, ON24 AI Propel+ delivers:

• • Campaign velocity with streamlined setup that gets integrated campaigns live in hours, not weeks
  • Automatic scale through AI that generates follow-up content and nurture sequences from every event, extending engagement across channels and timeframes
  • Team-friendly design that works for lean teams running frequent, campaign-driven programs

Built on the evolution of ON24’s trusted platform as an AI-first solution, ON24 AI Propel+ gives marketers the tools to finally treat events like the engagement engines they should be.

The competitive advantage

The old webinar model isn’t just limiting, it’s leaving value on the table. While competitors continue running one-dimensional programs, forward-thinking marketers have the opportunity to transform every event into weeks of personalized engagement.

The companies that recognize this shift and act on it will separate themselves from competitors still thinking in terms of individual events. 

Ready to join them? Discover ON24 AI Propel+ and start turning your events into campaign engines that drive measurable pipeline growth.

Because in the end, the question isn’t “How many people attended?” It’s “How much pipeline did this campaign create? And how did AI help scale it?” The future belongs to marketers who can answer that question with confidence.