Webinars are on the rise. Businesses run more webinars than ever, and decision makers participate in them weekly. Let's dive into some webinar statistics to help understand the webinar space.
- How effective are webinars?
- What are the best days and times to host them?
- What's the best day to send your invitations?
Most webinar statistics are from the same old reports (2015-2018) — so we wanted to make our own report and include some up-to-date statistics from our 2024 data.
We'll answer all of these questions and more through these 34 (and many more) researched-backed webinar statistics so you can become a webinar pro.
Contrast is the modern webinar platform built for engagement with AI repurposing features to help transform every webinar into 10+ pieces of content.
Top 2024 Webinar Statistics
If you were to remember only a few webinar statistics, remember these:
- 91% of B2B professionals say webinars are their preferred type of content
- 83% of webinars have fewer than 50 live attendees
- 63% of webinar views are on-demand (replay)
- Webinars with <100 registrants have 10.3% higher live attendance rates
- Most registrations happen on Tuesdays (21%)
- 9% of webinar registrations happen the day of the webinar
- B2B marketers get on average 6.3 new pieces of content from each webinar
- AI repurposing features save marketers 4-10 hours per webinar and help them create on average 20% more content
What Makes Webinars Good for Marketing?
Your good old marketing and sales tactics just don't have the same impact as they used too. And for good reason — consumers are getting smarter about them: they can recognize an ad or a sales pitch from a mile away.
This makes webinars a particularly powerful medium for businesses.
Buyers are searching for valuable content and solutions to help them solve their problems, and businesses are turning to webinars to get their message across.
What is a Webinar?
A webinar is an online event (usually hosted by a company or business) broadcasted live at a given date and time. Most webinar tools let you create a registration page associated to your webinar, so your audience can sign up, get reminders, and receive a recording of the webinar.
During the live event, the host (and sometimes guest speakers) will interact with the audience using engagement features like Q&A, polls, and chat.
Why Run Webinars in 2024?
We see webinars making a comeback in 2024, and for many reasons. Banner blindness, overexposure, and consumer education are making other acquisition channels less effective.
Webinars on the other hand, offer 3 main advantages:
- Lead generation: Marketers can use webinars to create and extend their email marketing audiences all while making sure that they are relevant contacts (because they are interested in the topic of the webinar). Webinar are powerful lead generation tools, both for increasing the number of leads and moving them down the funnel.
- Authenticity and engagement: Live webinars give hosts and speakers a platform to share their stories and experiences, which humanizes the brand. Audience members get the opportunity to engage with the brand, increasing stickiness and likelihood to buy.
- Repurposing: Marketers are often asked to "do more with less" in tough economic periods — and webinars are a great solution to this. Repurposing webinar content is a great way to increase content output: each webinar can become a blog article, a few social media posts, and short highlight clips.
Are Webinars Worth it in 2024?
Webinars are a great content format for any business in 2024, but let's look at some numbers that confirm this:
1. 91% of B2B professionals say webinars are their preferred type of content
(BrightTALK — 2019)
The results from this study show that webinars are their top learning format, followed by industry articles (60%), whitepapers (48%), and blog posts (42%). The same survey showed that 54% of B2B participants surveyed engage with webinars on a daily or weekly basis.
2. B2B marketers rank webinars as the #2 best-performing content format
(Content Marketing Institute — 2023)
64% of B2B marketers hosted a webinar in the past 12 months, putting it in the top 5 most-created content formats. And 47% of B2B marketers said that webinars (or virtual events/online courses) were the best performing content format they had produced in the past 12 months.
3. B2B marketers consider webinar lead quality to be “above average”
(ON24 — 2020)
68% of surveyed marketers could tie webinars to revenue. 75% of them said webinars lowered their cost-per-lead. 38% rated webinars leads a 4 or 5 on a five-star scale, and the average rating was a 3.3/5.
General Webinar Statistics
Let's cover some high-level statistics about the webinar market:
4. The global webinar and virtual event market will reach $4.4B in 2025
(Frost & Sullivan — 2021)
Up from $1.57B in 2020, the industry is set to grow at a 23% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). The primary reasons for this growth are advanced data reporting, accessibility, potential reach, ease-of-use of webinar tools, less business travel, and sustainability.
5. 77% of webinar revenue comes from North America
(Research Nester)
America dominates the webinar scene bringing in over 3/4 of the total revenue. However, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are fast-growing regions in this market.
6. Over 83% of webinars have fewer than 50 live attendees
(Contrast — 2024)
Most webinars don't have thousands of people attending — and that's ok. As we'll see later, smaller webinars have higher live attendance rates and average engagement. But only 69% of webinars have under 50 views (live + on-demand).
Webinar Engagement Statistics
Now lets look at some statistics about viewer engagement that you can use to improve your webinar strategy:
7. 58.4% of registrants watch the webinar (live or replay)
(Contrast — 2024)
On average, nearly 6 out of 10 registrants watch Contrast webinars. Frictionless user experiences, automated reminders and follow-ups, automatic on-demand webinars and AI repurposing features all increase content consumption.
8. 63% of webinar views are on-demand (replay)
(Contrast — 2024)
Most people have busy schedules and won't be able to make it to the live. On average, 37% of registrants watch the replay. And 46% of viewers watch only the replay.
9. Webinars in March are viewed the most (71%)
(Contrast — 2024)
After the high-volume months of January and February, March is a slower month with only 5.5% of webinars. This means less competition and more audience availability, making it the best month in terms of views (live + on-demand).
10. 17% of webinars happen at 11AM local time
(Contrast — 2024)
Most webinars happen at 11AM local time, followed by 10AM (13.6%) and 12PM (9.2%). Not surprisingly, these webinar slots also have above-average live attendance rates, but aren't the best choice.
11. 30% of webinars use live polls
(Contrast — 2024)
Polls are a great way to interact with your audience but only 30% of webinar hosts use live polls to engage their audience.
12. The top 5% of webinars get 70% poll completion rate
(Contrast — 2024)
The best webinar hosts run a poll every half an hour (30 mins). Which for a 1h webinar is 2 polls on average. People complete them 70% of the time. Hosts that show polls on-stage get 15% more completions than hosts who don't.
13. 67% of professionals want "Tips, tricks, and best practices" content
(BrightTALK — 2021)
The category was voted "most valuable for professional growth" followed by course (53%), case studies (53%), and industry trends (50%).
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Start for freeWebinar Registration Statistics
What are the days of the week with the most registrants? How long should your webinar be? What prevents people from registering to your webinars?
14. Webinar registration page conversion rate can be up to 59%
(Contrast — 2024)
The quality of your webinar registration page can have an impact on the total number of people who register and their conversion rates to live attendees. Webinar landing pages have substantially higher average conversion rates than your typical landing page (10%).
15. Wednesday and Friday webinars have the higher average registrations
(Contrast — 2024)
The stats show that Thursdays are probably the best day to run your webinar. But this creates an opportunity for people to run webinars on other days, with less competition. Friday and Wednesday webinars have on average 30% and 10% more registrants respectively.
16. 90-minute webinars have the highest average registrations
(Contrast — 2024)
90-minute webinars are a lot less common than 60-minute webinars, but have 15% more registrants on average. Only 3% of webinars are 90 minutes long. Audience members likely expect more value than your traditional 1-hour webinar and are more likely to sign up.
17. 78% of people would not register to a webinar that looks too "salesy" or marketing-focused
(BrightTALK — 2021)
Other common reasons for not wanting to register to a webinar are: content is too product-focused (78%), or poor platform experience (78%). Make sure your content is aligned with your audience and you're using a modern webinar platform.
18. Email marketing is the best channel for registrations, ads are the worst
(Big book of webinar stats — 2019)
57% of webinar registrations come from email marketing campaigns. They are 4 times more effective than the second best channel for driving registrations: social media. Ads have some of the worst attendance rates, sometimes as low as 20-25%.
Webinar Attendance Rates
Increasing your webinar attendance rates is an easy way to increase your webinar ROI — so whats the best way to do so?
19. Thursdays have the highest live attendance rates (41.5%)
(Contrast — 2024)
Want to maximize the number of people who make it to your webinar live? Host your webinar on a Thursday. Wednesday and Friday are the second and third-best days to host your webinar with ~40% live attendance rates.
20. Webinars at 2PM have the highest average attendance rates (50%)
(Contrast — 2024)
Who doesn't like watching a webinar right after lunch? 2PM webinars have the highest live attendance rates followed by 12PM (46%) and 11AM (45.6%). Remember to factor in where your audience is based and translate that into their local times.
21. January is the month with the highest average live attendance rate (48%)
(Contrast — 2024)
A lot of companies wait for the new year to run webinars and make their announcements. January and February are the 2 months with the most webinars (11% and 14% respectively). January has the highest average live attendance rate.
22. 30 and 45 min webinars have 5% higher live attendance rates than 60 minute webinars
(Contrast — 2024)
61% of webinars are 60 minutes long, but only 14% of webinars are 45 min. Picking a non-conventional webinar length can increase live attendance rates by up to 5%. Try to fit your hour-long webinar's content into 45 minutes.
23. Webinars with <100 registrants have 10.3% higher live attendance rates
(Contrast — 2024)
Smaller webinars tend to be more targeted and relevant to the audiences. This increases live attendance rates. They also get 10% more total views. Running more, smaller webinars can be a great way to increase webinar engagement.
1000+ registrant webinars have the lowest average attendance rates.
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These webinar statistics will help you improve your webinar promotion efforts:
24. Most registrations happen on Tuesdays (21%)
(Contrast — 2024)
Tuesday is the day of the week with the most registrations, followed by Thursday (20.3%) and Monday (19%). These are the best days to send out invitations to your webinar.
25. Market your webinar between 9AM and 5PM local times
(Contrast — 2024)
60% of registrations happen between 9AM and 5PM local times. 17% of registrations between 9AM and 11AM and 16.3% of registrations between 2PM and 4PM.
26. 54.7% of webinar registrations happen <7 days before the event
(Contrast — 2024)
More than half of all webinar registrations happen in the week before the webinar goes live. 78.9% of registrations happen in the 2 weeks before the event goes live.
Only 7.3% of registration happen more than 4 weeks before the webinar's scheduled date.
27. 9% of webinar registrations happen the day of the webinar
(Contrast — 2024)
Don't stop marketing your webinar until you go live, people will sign up until the last few minutes. 18.6% of registrations happen within the 48 hours before the webinar goes live.
Webinar Costs
The cost of running webinars will impact the ROI of your webinar strategy. So how much does it actually cost to run a webinar?
28. Hosting a webinar can cost between $0 and $5000+
(Contrast — 2024)
All the best webinar tools offer free plans allowing businesses to start getting registrations on their landing page and run a webinar for $0 (if they already have equipment like a laptop). Some businesses will want to invest in hiring guest speakers, paid marketing, or better equipment to improve their webinar strategy and this can increase costs significantly.
29. 93% of webinars use webcams to record the video
(Contrast — 2024)
The quality of laptop webcams is increasing year after year, allowing businesses to create high-quality webinars without needing to invest in expensive equipment. 6% of webinars are run using phones (recent phone models have hand-held camera quality images) and 1% used professional camera equipment.
30. The average cost per lead for webinars is $72
(VisitorQueue — 2023)
On average, a lead from a webinar costs $72. While on the high end $98 and on the low end $45. These numbers might seem pretty high but when you factor in all the other potential benefits from webinars: the content, engagement, SEO potential, webinars still have incredibly high ROI.
31. 79% of marketers integrate webinar data with their CRM
(Contrast — 2024)
Making the most of webinar data requires integrating this data with their CRM (or other systems). Common integrations are with HubSpot, or automation tools like Zapier, Make, or Webhooks or APIs.
Webinar Repurposing Statistics
Webinar repurposing is the new trend in the webinar space, and is saving marketers a lot of time, but how efficient is repurposing?
32. B2B marketers get on average 3-4 new pieces of content from each webinar
(Contrast — 2024)
Modern webinar tools provide AI features to help with content repurposing and of the 83% of users that try the AI repurposing features, they create on average 3.5 new pieces of content from each webinar (clips, articles, newsletters, etc.).
33. Each webinar has potential to create 4 short clips on average
(Contrast — 2024)
AI analysis of hundreds of webinars have shown that the average webinar has 4 or 5 moments that could be made into clips with high virality scores: sharing personal experiences or anecdotes, numbers, stories or more.
34. AI repurposing features save marketers 4-10 hours per webinar and help them create on average 20% more content
(Contrast — 2024)
The same AI repurposing features are saving marketers hundreds of hours by automatically transcribing the webinar, finding the best moments, suggesting new webinar ideas, creating and subtitling clips.
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Start for freeConclusion
There we go, we've finished covering these 34 webinar statistics (and many more) — you have everything you need to start or improve your webinar strategy.
The main lesson is that you need to adapt to your audience: When's the best day of the week for them? What time are they available? How can you create content that's beneficial for them?
The better you understand your audience, the better webinars you'll be able to create for them.
Save this cheat sheet so you can remember the key numbers:
Sources:
Contrast
Research Nester
BrightTALK
Content Marketing Institute
Frost & Sullivan
