Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How large software companies run their webinars, in our own read of their webinar pages; how many public companies mention webinars in their annual reports, in our count of every 10-K on SEC EDGAR since 2002; what share of registrants attend, how many watch on demand, how long they stay and when they sign up, from the webinar platforms' own benchmarks with each platform's definition of an attendee kept beside its number; how B2B marketers and buyers use webinars, from the Content Marketing Institute and Demand Gen Report; what Zoom, Microsoft, Webex, Google and others allow; how the webinar software business has done, from ON24's, Cvent's and Zoom's filings; who attends online, from Eurostat, Pew and NCES; and where the popular webinar numbers came from.
4.35% of all 10-Ks filed in 2025 mentioned webinars, up from 2.33% in 2019, by our count of EDGAR. (Our EDGAR count)See details
79.5% of the on-demand webinar pages we read at the 145 largest software publishers put the recording behind an email form. (Our read)See details
Only 33.8% of those companies ran webinars or events on a named platform visible on the page; the rest used their own pages and forms. (Our read)See details
86.8% of their upcoming virtual sessions fell on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, and 73.1% of timed sessions started in the 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. hours Eastern. (Our read)See details
In business services, including software, 14.52% of 2025 10-Ks mentioned webinars. (Our EDGAR count)See details
In 2025, platform attendance rates ran from 47.7% (Livestorm, live only) to 60% (ON24, live and on demand): the definition moves the number. (Livestorm, ON24)See details
Goldcast's headline 51% attendance rate pools to roughly a third: 118,000 attendees from 370,000+ registrations. (Goldcast)See details
45% of ON24 webinar attendees watched on demand in 2024 (56% joined live), up from 38% in 2019. (ON24)See details
The average Livestorm webinar ran 68 minutes in 2025; the average viewer watched 26. (Livestorm)See details
15.3% of Livestorm registrations in 2025 came on the day of the webinar and 49.7% in the final week. (Livestorm)See details
55% of B2B marketers used webinars in CMI's 2024 survey, the same share as in-person events. (Content Marketing Institute)See details
ON24's revenue peaked at $203.6 million in 2021; Cvent bought it for $8.10 a share in 2026. (ON24 filings)See details
The 'average attendance rate is 40-50%' line traces to a 2015 ReadyTalk blog post with no data behind it. (ReadyTalk)See details
How do large software companies run their webinars?
Mostly on their own pages, with the recording behind a form. On November 1, 2026 we read the webinar and events pages of the 145 largest SEC-reporting software publishers (SIC code 7372, at least $100 million in revenue, the same companies as our SaaS video statistics), in a headless browser, and opened up to three webinars or events on each. 93 listing pages were readable.
Only 33.8% of the 74 companies whose webinar or event pages we could open used a named webinar or event platform that showed on the page; the rest registered people on their own pages and forms, with any Zoom, Teams or Webex link sent after sign-up. Counting only webinar or virtual-session pages, it was 29.3%. Cvent appeared at 10.8% of companies, mostly for in-person events, Goldcast at 8.1% and ON24 at 6.8%. Where a recording plays, it is most often on Wistia, a video host: 14.9% of companies.
The replay is usually a lead form. 79.5% of the 44 on-demand webinar pages we could classify asked for an email address before the recording would play, and only 24.1% of 29 companies offered at least one recording without a form. On Livestorm, by its own count, 62% of teams gate their replays (Livestorm).
The schedule follows the folklore. 57.0% of the readable pages listed a session dated November 1 or later, and 46.2% at least one upcoming virtual session. Of 121 upcoming single-day virtual sessions, 86.8% fell on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, with Thursday the most common at 33.1%. 73.1% of the 67 sessions with a printed start time and time zone started in the 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. hours Eastern, and 11 a.m. Eastern was the single most common start, 31.3%. Only 23.7% of pages said how long a session would run; the median stated length was 45 minutes, and 60 minutes the most common.
Webinars share the page with rooms. 49.5% of pages listed in-person events, 45.2% mixed in-person and virtual sessions, 46.2% listed only virtual sessions, and 22.6% let visitors filter by type.
Limits: one visit per page; sessions behind "load more" buttons, tabs or registration were not seen, so upcoming counts are a floor; a platform used only after registration is invisible to us; the virtual or in-person label is a keyword match, unclear for 79 of 341 dated entries. In a hand check of 20 classifications, 18 were right. Per-company data: webinar-pages.csv and crawl-summary.json.
How many public companies mention webinars in their annual reports?
4.35% of all 10-K annual reports filed with the SEC in 2025 mentioned webinars, by our count of EDGAR full-text search, 280 of 6,431 filings. The share nearly doubled across the pandemic, from 2.33% in 2019 and 2.40% in 2020 to 4.11% in 2021, and has held there since. In 2002 it was 0.09%, six filings; by 2010, 1.00%.
"Virtual events" rose and fell faster: 0.06% of 10-Ks in 2019, 1.34% in 2021 and 0.84% in 2025. "Hybrid events" peaked at 0.19% in 2022 and was 0.11% in 2025.
A mention is not a practice. In a hand check of 40 random hits, 24 referred to the company's own marketing, customer, partner or investor webinars and 15 to employee training or wellness webinars, all of those in filings from 2023 on, in the human-capital section the SEC added to 10-Ks in 2020. None of the 12 sampled hits from before 2023 was an employee use, so the 2021 rise was not that section, but part of the level since 2023 is. The denominator includes trusts and funds that market nothing, which is why the industry rows are the fairer comparison. "Webcast" is mentioned far more often, but every sampled hit was an earnings-call or shareholder-meeting webcast, so we do not report it as a marketing measure. Counts by year, method and spot checks: edgar-counts.csv and edgar-industry-2025.csv.
What is the average webinar attendance rate?
Between about a third and 60% of registrants, depending on whose platform counted and what it calls an attendee. The highest published figure, ON24's 60% average registration-to-attendee conversion in 2025 (ON24), counts people who watched live or on demand. Livestorm, which counts live attendees only, reported an average show-up rate of 47.7% across 33,786 webinars in 2025 (Livestorm), down from 48.9% in 2024 (Livestorm). All of these companies sell webinar software and count webinars run on their own platforms.
The definition moves the number more than the year does. On Univid's platform, 49% of registrants attended live across 2,000+ webinars from January 2023 to August 2026, and 57% once replay-only viewers are counted (Univid). On Contrast, 61% of more than a million registrants watched live or on replay (Contrast). Goldcast headlined a 51% average attendance rate in its first benchmark (Goldcast), but the same report's totals, 370,000+ registrations and 118,000 attendees across 900 webinars, pool to roughly a third (Goldcast): an average of each webinar's rate weights small webinars as heavily as large ones.
Size works against turnout. On Contrast, webinars with 1,000 or more registrants had the lowest average live attendance rate, 37%, against 44% for webinars with 100 to 1,000 registrants (Contrast). In ON24's 2018 sample of 22,922 webinars, the average conversion was 55.9 percent overall but 43.3% for events with more than 100 attendees (ON24). The purpose matters too: ON24 measured 67% for internal communications webinars in 2018, against 39.10% for marketing and 30.79% for continuing education (ON24).
Platform (vendor)
What counts as attending
Webinars counted
Rate
Source
ON24
Registrants who watched live or on demand (definition published only in the 2019 report)
Livestorm's own pages disagree with each other: its webinar-statistics page gives 46% across industries, from 63% in pharmaceuticals to 33% in advertising, against 47.7% in its 2026 benchmark (Livestorm). We print both. ON24 published how it counts an attendee only once, in its 2019 report; its later posts give the rate without a definition.
How many webinar viewers watch on demand?
About two in five, on the platforms that publish it, and the share has crept up since 2019. On ON24's platform, 38% of webinar attendees watched on demand in 2019 (ON24) and 45% in 2024, when 56% joined live (ON24); the two shares overlap because some attendees did both. ON24's 2026 post gives two different 2025 figures: on-demand viewing is 50% of all attendees in one place and 43% in another (ON24). We print both and treat neither as settled. In 2018, Thirty-six percent of ON24 attendees watched only the recording (ON24).
On Contrast, 42% of webinar views were replays in its 2026 edition, down from 47% the year before (Contrast). On Univid, 24% of attendees watched only the replay and 14% watched both live and replay (Univid). On Banzai's Demio platform the average customer ran 27 on-demand webinars in 2023 against 9 live ones (Banzai).
Most webinars still start live. 91% of webinars on Contrast were delivered live, about 4% simulive (a recording played as if live) and about 3% mixed pre-recorded clips into a live session (Contrast). Marketers on ON24 ran 57% of their webinars live in 2022, 17% on demand and 26% simulive (ON24).
Public replays get more views than gated ones. 62% of Livestorm teams put their replays behind registration in 2025 and 20% made them public; public replays averaged 14.60 on-demand views against 3.97 for gated ones (Livestorm). That is a comparison across teams that chose differently, not a test, and the teams that publish replays may have larger audiences to begin with.
How long are webinars, and how long do people stay?
Most webinars are scheduled for about an hour, and the average viewer stays well under that on every platform that reports both. Livestorm's average webinar in 2025 ran 68 minutes while the average viewer watched 26 minutes, 38% of the session (Livestorm). On Contrast, viewers dropped off at the 22-minute mark on average and 37% stayed for the whole of a 60-minute webinar (Contrast). On Demio, more than half of participants left before 90% of the webinar was over (Banzai).
ON24's average engagement time has drifted down: 58 minutes in 2018, including a 10 to 15 minute Q&A (ON24), 55 minutes for live webinars in 2022 (ON24), 53 minutes for live webinars in 2023 against 30 minutes on demand (ON24), 51 minutes in 2024 (ON24) and Forty-nine minutes in 2025 (ON24). ON24's 2015 post put average live viewing at 38 minutes in 2010 and 56 minutes by 2014 (ON24). In the first nine months of 2020, ON24 told the SEC, its live webinars with more than five attendees averaged more than 200 attendees who stayed more than 50 minutes (ON24 S-1).
Scheduled length clusters at an hour. The most common length on Univid was 60 minutes, 37% of webinars, and 30 to 60 minute webinars were 86% of the total (Univid). ClickMeeting, whose figures cover every kind of online event on its platform, reported an average event of 106 minutes in 2024 (ClickMeeting) with participants staying 74 minutes, about 70% of the event (ClickMeeting); in 2025 the average event ran 102 minutes and paid events 131 (ClickMeeting).
Longer is not worse for the people who come. In Contrast's 2026 benchmark, 90-minute webinars had the highest live attendance rate, 67%, ahead of 45-minute (49%), 60-minute (47%) and 30-minute webinars (44%) (Contrast). On Livestorm in 2025, 30 to 44 minute sessions drew 12.5% active participation in chat against 20.7% for sessions of 90 minutes or more (Livestorm). Both are comparisons across webinars, not tests: long sessions tend to be training or deep-dive formats with a committed audience. Buyers say they will give a webinar the time: in Demand Gen Report's 2022 survey of 174 B2B executives, 53% were willing to spend 30 to 60 minutes on one (Demand Gen Report) and 19% more than 60 minutes (Demand Gen Report).
Recorded lessons are a different case. In a study of 6.9 million viewing sessions in four edX courses in fall 2012, median engagement was at most 6 minutes whatever the video's length (Guo, Kim and Rubin, Learning@Scale); the authors analysed 6.9 million sessions (Learning@Scale). That is course video watched alone, not a live session with a presenter and Q&A.
How much do webinar audiences interact?
Q&A is the one feature nearly every webinar uses; polls are used in under half. The Q&A widget was used in 81% of ON24 webinars in 2018 (ON24). ON24 webinars in 2024 averaged 14 attendee questions, 19 survey responses and 91 resource downloads (ON24). Livestorm webinars in 2025 averaged 20.4 questions and 2.77 polls per session (Livestorm). Polls ran in 46% of webinars on Contrast in its 2026 benchmark (Contrast), 40% on Univid from 2023 to 2026 (Univid) and 19% on Goldcast in 2025 (Goldcast). Where a webinar had a call-to-action button, an average of 22% of attendees clicked it on Univid from 2023 to 2026 (Univid). On Demio, attention measured by Banzai's own "focus rate" was lower in live webinars (74.2%) than on-demand ones (Banzai); Banzai does not define the metric.
When do people register for webinars?
Late, and on ON24 later than before the pandemic. Of 7,062,572 registrations for Livestorm webinars in 2025, 15.3% came on the day of the event and 49.7% in the final seven days (Livestorm); only 16.4% came three or more weeks ahead (Livestorm). On ON24 in 2018, 54 percent of registrants signed up at least eight days before and 11% on the day (ON24); by 2020 and 2021, 20% of registrations came on the day of the live event (ON24). In 2019 more than a quarter of ON24 registrants signed up more than 15 days ahead (ON24), and in 2022 half signed up at least two weeks ahead (ON24). GoToWebinar counted 69% of registrations in the week before the webinar across 300,000+ webinars in the year before November 2017 (GoToWebinar).
Is there a best day or time for a webinar?
Not one that the platforms agree on. The differences between weekdays are a few points, and the "best" day differs by platform. On Livestorm in 2025, Tuesday webinars had the highest show-up rate, 51.7%, and Friday and weekend webinars the lowest, 50.3% (Livestorm), while Wednesday drew the largest live audiences, 94 on average (Livestorm). On Univid, across 2023 to 2026, Wednesday had the highest live attendance rate, 51% (Univid). In Contrast's 2026 benchmark, Tuesday webinars converted 49.71%, below Monday (53.26%) and Friday (52.02%), which drew far fewer registrations (Contrast).
By hour, in the same Contrast data, webinars starting at 2 p.m. local time had the highest average live attendance on Contrast, 55%, while 11 a.m. was the most common start (Contrast). GoToWebinar also found 11:00 am the most popular start time (GoToWebinar). By month, Livestorm's 2025 show-up rate peaked in January (50.4%) and bottomed in August at 42.9% (Livestorm); January was also Contrast's best month, at 51% (Contrast).
The older "Tuesday to Thursday, 10 to 11 a.m." advice counts something else: the share of all attendees who watched on each day or in each hour, which mostly reflects when hosts schedule webinars. Our origin trace below shows where it came from.
How many B2B marketers use webinars?
About half, by the Content Marketing Institute's annual survey, a share that has barely moved since the pandemic boom faded. In CMI and MarketingProfs' survey of 980 B2B marketers fielded June to August 2024, 55% used webinars to distribute content in the previous 12 months, the same share as in-person events (Content Marketing Institute); 40% used digital events, a separate answer (CMI), and 16% hybrid events (CMI). A year earlier, 56% of 894 marketers used webinars and 56% in-person events (CMI), with 44% using digital events and 18% hybrid (CMI).
The pandemic years show the swing. In July 2021, 64% of 810 B2B content marketers had used virtual events, webinars or online courses in the previous year (CMI) and only 19% in-person events (CMI). By July 2022, virtual was at 62% and in-person back to 49% (CMI) (CMI). Before the pandemic, in mid-2019, 57% of 679 North American B2B marketers used webinars or online events in the previous 12 months and 73% in-person events (CMI) (CMI). CMI changed its answer options between editions (2021 and 2022 combined virtual events, webinars and online courses into one option), and ON24, which sells webinar software, sponsored the 2022 and 2023 editions.
Marketers rate webinars close to in-person events. In the 2024 survey, in-person events (52%) and webinars (51%) were the channels most often called effective (CMI); in 2023, in-person events (56%) and webinars (51%) produced the best results (CMI). In 2022 in-person edged ahead, 48% to 47% (CMI); in 2021 virtual events and webinars were the top answer at 58% (CMI) and only 37% of in-person users named in-person events (CMI). Asked about video formats in 2021, 51% said webinars, webcasts or web series worked best (CMI).
Budgets lean back toward rooms. 32% of marketers expected to spend more on webinars in 2025, against 35% for in-person events (CMI); for 2024 it was 33% against 47% (CMI). In 2021, with vaccines arriving, only 33% expected to raise spending on digital or virtual events (CMI). In CMI's 2025 survey of 1,015 B2B marketers, 52% named speaking events or webinars among the best channels for thought leadership (CMI), and 22% personalized webinars, against 85% who personalized email (CMI).
What do B2B buyers say about webinars?
Buyers use them, and will trade contact details for them. In Demand Gen Report's 2022 Content Preferences Survey of 174 B2B executives, 67% had engaged with webinars in the previous 12 months, up from 57% (Demand Gen Report); 40% named webinars among the most valuable sources for researching a purchase (Demand Gen Report), and 42% shared them with colleagues (Demand Gen Report). ON24 sponsored the 2022 survey. In Demand Gen Report's 2019 survey of 200+ senior B2B respondents, 63% were willing to share their information to access a webinar, against 49% for white papers (Demand Gen Report), and webinars were the second most valuable format for influencer content at 39% (Demand Gen Report).
What about in-person and hybrid events?
In-person business events are back above their 2019 pipeline. The Events Industry Council and Oxford Economics count 1.65 billion participants in business events worldwide in 2025 (Events Industry Council), US$1.3 trillion in direct spending (Events Industry Council) and 318 million trade-show participants (Events Industry Council); their definition (10+ people, four hours, a contracted venue) leaves webinars out. Requests for proposal for future events ran at 113% of 2019 levels in the second quarter of 2026 (Events Industry Council). In a November 2024 survey of 1,500+ organizers and attendees by Bizzabo, which sells event and webinar software, 78% of organizers said in-person events had the most impact (Bizzabo) and 57% had seen attendance rise (Bizzabo).
How many webinars are run?
Tens of millions of webinar attendances a year on Zoom alone. Zoom says 9M+ webinars were hosted on its platform in 2025 (Zoom), with 692M+ webinar attendees (Zoom) and 616M webinar hours attended (Zoom); it does not say whether an attendee is a person or a join. GoTo's webinar page said in October 2026 that its platform powers over 2.8 million events a year (GoTo), and Banzai counted more than 800,000 webinars on Demio in 2023, over 20% more than in 2022 (Banzai). ON24 told the SEC its platform ran more than 159,000 live webinars and virtual events in the first nine months of 2020 (ON24 S-1), an annual run rate of 2.45 billion engagement minutes, up 167% (ON24 S-1).
Average audiences are small. Univid's webinars averaged 102 live attendees, and 71% had fewer than 100 (Univid). Livestorm's average webinar had 175 registrants and 83 live attendees in 2025 (Livestorm); Contrast's had 128 registrants, with the top 10% at 288 or more (Contrast). ON24 reports larger events: an average of 216 attendees per webinar in 2024 (ON24). Its 2026 post says the average rose 11% to 239 but labels that year 2024, the year its previous report gave 216 for (ON24); we print ON24's label and flag the conflict. EMEA webinars on ON24 averaged 130 attendees in 2022 (ON24). ClickMeeting organizers gathered 75 participants per event on average in 2024, from 79 in Poland to 69 in the USA and Great Britain (ClickMeeting), and paid webinars there averaged 41 attendees in 2025 (ClickMeeting).
How many people can a webinar platform hold?
From a few hundred to a million, depending on plan and add-ons. Zoom's 10-K for fiscal 2026 says Zoom Webinars can reach 1 million attendees with an expanded single-use license, last up to 30 hours and carry 1,000 panelists (Zoom 10-K); five years earlier its 10-K gave 50,000 attendees (Zoom 10-K). The limits below were read from each owner's documentation on November 1, 2026 unless dated otherwise; they change often.
Webex's two help pages give different limits; we show both because the newer page does not say the older limit was withdrawn. Two vendors define an attendee in opposite ways on their pricing pages: BigMarker counts live attendees only (BigMarker), while Livestorm bills for anyone who joins live, watches the replay or watches on demand, counted once per session (Livestorm). Microsoft retired Teams live events on June 30, 2026 (Microsoft), included some former Premium features in Teams Enterprise from April 1, 2026 (Microsoft), caps Teams meetings at 300 people on Business plans (Microsoft) and keeps recordings not uploaded to Stream for 20 days (Microsoft). Google lets Meet live-stream viewers take part in a poll or Q&A (Google). YouTube's low-latency setting gives most viewers a delay under 10 seconds (YouTube), and ultra-low under 5 seconds, with no 4K (YouTube).
LinkedIn said in August 2019, during its beta, that LinkedIn Live streams drew 7x more reactions (LinkedIn) and 24x more comments than regular video (LinkedIn); it published no sample or method, and has not repeated the figures.
How big did video meetings get?
Zoom's chief executive wrote that daily meeting participants peaked at about 10 million in December 2019 (Zoom), more than 200 million in March 2020 (Zoom) and 300 million in April 2020 (Zoom). On 4/29/20 Zoom corrected its post: these were meeting participants, not users or people (Zoom). Microsoft Teams recorded 2.7 billion meeting minutes on March 31, 2020 (Microsoft), and passed 280 million monthly active users at the end of 2022 (Microsoft), 300 million in early 2023 (Microsoft) and 320 million in the quarter to September 2023, the last figure Microsoft has given (Microsoft). Teams Premium passed 3 million seats in mid-2024 (Microsoft). Cisco said in October 2018 that 113 million people used Webex Meetings each month (Cisco).
How has the webinar software business done since 2020?
It boomed in 2020, shrank from 2022, and its best-known pure player was bought in 2026. ON24, the webinar platform that filed with the SEC from 2021, grew revenue from 89.1 million dollars in 2019 (ON24 10-K) to 156.9 million in 2020 (ON24 10-K) and a peak of 203.6 million in 2021 (ON24 10-K). Revenue then fell to 190.9 million in 2022 (ON24 10-K), 163.7 million in 2023 (ON24 10-K) and 148,081 thousand dollars in 2024 (ON24 10-K). ON24 blamed reduced budgets, customers returning to in-person marketing and competition for declines of 6% and 14% (ON24 10-K).
Source: ON24 Form S-1 and 10-K filings, 2021-2026, on SEC EDGAR; each figure links to its filing in the evidence table.
The pandemic expansion reversed fast. ON24's dollar-based net retention was 147% at September 30, 2020 (ON24 S-1) and fell to 97% a year later as first-time renewers churned and customers cut pandemic-era expansions (ON24 10-K). Its annual recurring revenue doubled from $76.9 million to $153.4 million in 2020 and reached 171,384 thousand dollars at the end of 2021 (ON24 10-K), then fell to 129,659 thousand at the end of 2024 (ON24 10-K). At September 30, 2020 it reported 1,918 customers (ON24 S-1). Cvent, the event-management company, bought ON24 for 8.10 dollars a share in cash, closing on April 1, 2026 (ON24 8-K), a premium of about 62% (ON24 proxy).
Cvent itself went the same way. Its virtual-event product, Attendee Hub, launched in August 2020 and brought in 7.7 million dollars that year (Cvent 10-K), then grew by 62.1 million in 2021 (Cvent 10-K). Cvent's total revenue was 518,811 thousand dollars in 2021 (Cvent 10-K) and 630,558 thousand in 2022 as in-person events returned (Cvent 10-K), from about 11,000 customers (Cvent 10-K); its net dollar retention rose to 113.9% (Cvent 10-K). Blackstone funds took Cvent private in 2023 at a premium of about 52% (Cvent proxy).
The rest of the field consolidated. LogMeIn, which sold GoToWebinar, made 686,499 thousand dollars from its collaboration products in 2019 (LogMeIn 10-K) out of 1,260,385 thousand in total (LogMeIn 10-K), and was taken private at 86.05 dollars a share in 2020 (LogMeIn proxy). RingCentral bought Hopin's events and session platforms in July 2023 for 22.2 million dollars in total consideration (RingCentral 10-K). Zoom's revenue was 4,099,864 thousand dollars in fiscal 2022 (Zoom 10-K) and grew only 7.1% in fiscal 2023, after 326% in fiscal 2021 (Zoom 10-K). None of these companies reports webinar revenue on its own.
How many people take part in online meetings and courses?
Three in four adults in the EU now make internet video or voice calls, up from about half before the pandemic. Eurostat's household survey found 51.87% of people aged 16 to 74 used the internet for phone or video calls in the previous three months in 2019 (Eurostat) and 75.65% in 2025 (Eurostat). Among 65 to 74 year olds the share went from 24.24% (Eurostat) to 52.29% (Eurostat); among 16 to 24 year olds it was 89.11% in 2025 (Eurostat).
Online courses grew and then settled. 8.44% of EU adults did an online course in the previous three months in 2019 (Eurostat), 18.6% at the 2021 peak (Eurostat) and 16.21% in 2025 (Eurostat); among 16 to 24 year olds it was 39.45% in 2021 (Eurostat). In 2022, the first year Eurostat asked, 18.06% of adults talked with instructors or other learners through audio or video tools such as Zoom or Teams (Eurostat); in 2025 that was 39.13% of 16 to 24 year olds (Eurostat) and 2.77% of 65 to 74 year olds (Eurostat). In the United States, 61 percent of undergraduates took at least one distance course in fall 2021 (NCES), after 36 percent in fall 2019 and 75% in fall 2020 (NCES); distance courses include recorded material, not only live sessions.
Remote work keeps the audience at a desk. 5.4% of employed people in the EU usually worked from home in 2019 (Eurostat) and 8.8% in 2025 (Eurostat), with a further 14.2% working from home sometimes (Eurostat). In Great Britain, 28% of working adults were hybrid working in October 2024 (ONS), 29% of those 30 and over against 19% of 16 to 29 year olds (ONS).
In the United States, Pew Research Center found in April 2021 that half of adults had made video calls at least weekly since the pandemic began (Pew), with 27% of 18 to 49 year olds doing so daily (Pew). In October 2020, 81% of people working from home all or most of the time used video calling or online conferencing at least some of the time (Pew); 69% of upper-income teleworkers used it often, against 41% of lower-income ones (Pew), and 40% of frequent users under 50 felt worn out by it (Pew). By January 2022, 66% of full-time remote workers often used online conferencing (Pew), and 77% of those new to remote work did (Pew).
What does research say about virtual conferences and webinar fatigue?
Virtual events cut emissions and widen access, but people miss the networking. A life-cycle study in Nature Communications found moving a conference online cut its carbon footprint by 94% and energy use by 90% (Nature Communications); a hybrid with carefully chosen hubs and more than half of people in person cut both by about two-thirds (Nature Communications). Both figures model one conference. In a study published in Nature Sustainability, women's participation in science and engineering conferences rose by as much as 253% when they went online in 2020 (University of Texas at Austin), and students' and postdocs' by up to 344% (University of Texas at Austin). One in-person attendee had the footprint of about 7,000 virtual ones (University of Texas at Austin), yet 75% and 96% of attendees at two conferences preferred in-person networking (University of Texas at Austin). These figures come from the university's release; the article is paywalled.
Stanford researchers built a 15-item Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue Scale and validated it with 2724 respondents (Computers in Human Behavior Reports); more meetings, longer meetings and meetings without breaks each went with more fatigue, with correlations up to 0.27 (Computers in Human Behavior Reports). In a survey of 10,322 people in early 2021, 13.8% of women and 5.5% of men felt very or extremely fatigued after calls (Stanford University), and a peer-reviewed 2023 study of 9787 participants traced fatigue to self-view, sustained eye contact and feeling physically trapped (Computers in Human Behavior Reports). These are convenience samples.
Doctors felt the webinar flood first. In a November 2020 survey of 326 physicians, 59.8% were attending more webinars than a year before (PLoS ONE), 75.5% felt overwhelmed by them (PLoS ONE), 52.5% attended fewer than a quarter of those they were invited to (PLoS ONE), and 62.8% disagreed that webinars could replace in-person meetings (PLoS ONE). A Philippine medical alumni society ran 435 continuing-education webinars from 2015 to 2021 (Acta Medica Philippina), growing from fewer than 50 to more than 600 participants per session (Acta Medica Philippina). Among neurosurgery residents in Saudi Arabia after a 2020 webinar series, 89.1% attended more than half of the teaching, against 78.2% in person the year before (World Neurosurgery), and Seventy-five percent found webinar lectures more useful than in-person ones (World Neurosurgery).
What the popular webinar numbers really say
Eight webinar statistics recur on roundup pages, including those of webinar vendors. We traced each to the organization that produced it. Five began as a webinar vendor's blog line, customer quote or customer survey, published without a sample or method; the other three were measurements on one platform that lost their scope as they were repeated.
"The average webinar attendance rate is 40-50%"
The range is a 2015 vendor blog line, not a measurement. Findstack's 2025 roundup says the average attendance rate is 40% to 50% of registrants, crediting ReadyTalk (Findstack), and MarketingLTB prints 35-45% with no source (MarketingLTB). The earliest public 40-50% we found is an April 2015 post by ReadyTalk, a webinar vendor, stating "the average webinar attendance rate is 40 - 50% of registrants" and citing only its own infographic (ReadyTalk). The 35-45% is ON24's description of a good result, not an average: its 2016 report called 35% to 45% "a strong result" for marketing webinars while measuring 44 percent overall, a figure it warned includes partner and training events (ON24), and its 2018 report called 35 to 45 percent "a healthy conversion rate" (ON24). What ON24 measured for marketing webinars in 2012 was 42% (ON24). Use instead: a current platform figure with its definition, from the table above: 47.7% live on Livestorm in 2025 or 60% live and on demand on ON24.
"A webinar generates 500 to 1,000 leads"
It is one customer's quote. Affiliate Booster's 2026 roundup says one webinar can generate 500 to 1,000 qualified leads (Affiliate Booster), and Jobera turns it into an average: B2B marketers generate 500 to 1000 leads per webinar (Jobera). It began as a testimonial in GoToWebinar's 2017 Big Book of Webinar Stats, where the head of content at Mention, a media-monitoring company, said "We do one webinar and we get between 500 and more than 1,000 leads" (GoToWebinar). Use instead: nothing general. The average webinar had 128 registrants on Contrast and 175 on Livestorm in 2025.
"73% of B2B marketers say webinars are the best way to get quality leads"
The 73% cannot be found at the source it is credited to. Cvent's webinar-statistics page says 73% of B2B marketers and sales leaders believe webinars are the best way to generate high-quality leads (Cvent); Demand Gen Report credits InsideSales.com with 73% (Demand Gen Report), and Jobera has mutated it into 73% of webinar attendees converting to leads (Jobera). GoToWebinar's 2017 Big Book printed 73%, footnoted to InsideSales.com's "Optimal Lead Generation Methods" (GoToWebinar). InsideSales.com's own June 2017 release on that survey gives webinars 75 percent, ranked third behind small executive events and trade shows, as a way to build high-quality brand awareness, with no sample size (InsideSales.com). Its 2013 edition surveyed 423 people (eWeek). Use instead: CMI's 2024 survey, in which 51% of 980 B2B marketers called webinars one of the most effective distribution channels.
"Tuesday to Thursday, late morning, is the best time for a webinar"
The data behind it counts when attendees watched, which mostly reflects when hosts schedule. Zoom's 2026 statistics page says the best-performing days are Tuesday through Thursday with peaks between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. (Zoom). ReadyTalk wrote in 2015 that Tuesday and Wednesday are the best days, with no data (ReadyTalk). ON24's 2013 data gave Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 27% of attendance each, which it called attendance rates but which are shares of attendees by day (ON24), and 11 a.m. Pacific drew 25% of attendees in 2015 (ON24). GoToWebinar found Thursday drew 25% of attendees (GoToWebinar), and the 10 a.m. Pacific hour 29% in 2017 (GoToWebinar). Use instead: attendance rate by day, which differs by a few points and by platform (Tuesday on Livestorm, Wednesday on Univid, Monday on Contrast).
"60 minutes is the ideal webinar length; attendees stay 57 minutes"
Both come from one platform's averages. AEvent's 2024 roundup says attendees watch for 57 minutes on average, crediting GoTo (AEvent). GoToWebinar's 2019 Big Book measured 57 minutes across 250,000 webinars in 2017 (52 for marketing webinars) (GoToWebinar), and reported that 60-minute webinars drew the most registrants, which counts registrations by scheduled length, not results (GoToWebinar). Its earlier 2017 edition gave 61 minutes for a similar period (GoToWebinar). ON24 measured 56.4 minutes in 2017 (ON24) and 53 minutes in 2012 (ON24). Use instead:26 minutes watched of a 68-minute average session on Livestorm in 2025, or 49 minutes of engagement on ON24.
"20-40% of webinar attendees become qualified leads"
AEvent's 2024 roundup repeats that between 20% and 40% of attendees become qualified leads (AEvent). The line is ReadyTalk's 2015 post: "Based on a survey we conducted with our clients, between 20% and 40% of webinar attendees turned into qualified leads" (ReadyTalk), with no sample, date or definition of qualified. Use instead: nothing; it is unsupported.
"A webinar costs $100 to $3,000; a webinar lead costs $72"
Cvent says the average webinar cost per lead is $72 (Cvent). That figure is from a December 2018 post by the chief executive of Visitor Queue, which sells website-visitor identification, giving $72 with no source (Visitor Queue); its 2024 version still says $72 (Visitor Queue). The cost range is ReadyTalk's 2015 post: between $100 and $3,000 depending on promotion and technology (ReadyTalk), still repeated as $100 and $3000 (Jobera). Use instead: nothing; neither has a method.
"95% of marketers say webinars are essential" and "91% prefer webinars"
Cvent's current statistics page says 95% of marketers call webinars essential to their strategies (Cvent). The source is GoToWebinar's 2019 Big Book, a TechValidate survey of 564 GoToWebinar users, in which 95% of the marketers said GoToWebinar improves their marketing performance (GoToWebinar): a customer-satisfaction result. Search Engine Journal reported in May 2019 that 91% of professionals call webinars their top learning format (Search Engine Journal). BrightTALK's own release says webinars were the No. 1 preferred type of B2B content (91 percent) among surveyed professionals, who were its own platform users, with no sample size given (BrightTALK). Sci-Tech Today now dates it 2025: 91% of B2B professionals (Sci-Tech Today). Use instead: Demand Gen Report's 2022 survey, in which 67% of 174 B2B executives had engaged with a webinar in the past year.
We started from the questions people search for about webinar statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 333 figures from 46 publishers.
On November 1, 2026, each of the sourced figures on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: the webinar platforms' own benchmark reports and pages (ON24, Livestorm, Contrast, Univid, Goldcast, Banzai, ClickMeeting, GoToWebinar), the 10-K, S-1, proxy and 8-K filings of ON24, Cvent, LogMeIn, RingCentral and Zoom on SEC EDGAR, the platform owners' documentation (Microsoft, Zoom, Webex, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Vimeo, BigMarker, Livestorm, StreamYard, Restream), the Content Marketing Institute's and Demand Gen Report's surveys, Eurostat, Pew Research Center, NCES and ONS releases, peer-reviewed studies, and the original pages behind each popular claim. Many vendor pages were read through Internet Archive captures because on24.com and goto.com refuse scripts; three PubMed Central articles were matched through NCBI's E-utilities API after the site served a bot check. Our own figures come from EDGAR full-text search, counted on November 1, 2026, and from a headless-browser read of the webinar and events pages of the 145 largest SEC-reporting software publishers on the same day. We left out reports behind sign-up forms (BigMarker's and InsideSales.com's full reports), Bizzabo's 2026 figures (no sample or field dates published), and 10-K mentions of webcasts, which our spot checks found are earnings calls.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
Almost every webinar benchmark is vendor data. ON24, Livestorm, Contrast, Univid, Goldcast, Banzai, ClickMeeting and GoTo sell webinar software and count webinars run by their own customers. Their customers differ in size, industry and region, so a gap between platforms is not a gap between practices.
Attendance rates are not comparable across platforms. Some count live viewers only, some add replay viewers, some average each webinar's rate and some pool all registrants. We print each platform's definition where it published one; most did not.
A 10-K mention is not a practice. Our EDGAR counts show which annual reports use a word, including in exhibits and in employee-training passages; the denominator includes trusts and funds.
Our page read sees what a browser sees on one visit. Webinar platforms behind registration links, pages that refused a headless browser and webinars listed only after a click are missed.
The surveys are of marketers, not outcomes. CMI's and Demand Gen Report's figures are what respondents say they use and value; several editions were sponsored by ON24, and CMI changed its answer options between years.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/webinar-statistics#DRV-006. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "Webinar Statistics." Last verified Nov 1, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/webinar-statistics
APA
Mark Studios. (2026, November 1). Webinar statistics. https://www.markstudios.com/research/webinar-statistics
MLA
“Webinar Statistics.” Mark Studios, 1 Nov. 2026, www.markstudios.com/research/webinar-statistics.
Chicago
Mark Studios. “Webinar Statistics.” Last modified November 1, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/webinar-statistics.
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is February 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Nov 1, 2026: First published with 333 figures from 46 publishers, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average webinar attendance rate?
It depends on the platform's definition. On Livestorm, which counts live attendees only, the average show-up rate was 47.7% across 33,786 webinars in 2025. On ON24, which also counts on-demand viewers, the registration-to-attendee conversion was 60% in 2025. On Univid, 49% attended live and 57% including replay viewers.
How many webinar viewers watch the recording instead of live?
About two in five on the platforms that publish it: 45% of ON24 attendees watched on demand in 2024, while 56% joined live, and 42% of views on Contrast were replays. Public replays on Livestorm drew 14.60 on-demand views on average, against 3.97 for replays behind registration.
How long should a webinar be?
Most are scheduled for about an hour: 60 minutes was the most common length on Univid, 37% of webinars. Viewers stay less: the average Livestorm viewer watched 26 minutes of a 68-minute session in 2025. On Contrast, 90-minute webinars had the highest live attendance rate, 67%, but they tend to be training sessions with committed audiences.
What is the best day to host a webinar?
The platforms disagree, and the gaps are a few points. Tuesday had the highest show-up rate on Livestorm in 2025 (51.7%), Wednesday on Univid (51%), and Monday was higher than Tuesday on Contrast, where Tuesday converted 49.71%.
When do people register for webinars?
Late. On Livestorm in 2025, 15.3% of registrations came on the day and only 16.4% three or more weeks ahead. On ON24 in 2018, 54 percent registered at least eight days before.
Should a webinar recording be gated?
Most large software companies gate it: 79.5% of the on-demand webinar pages we read at the 145 largest SEC-reporting software publishers asked for an email before the recording played. Livestorm reports that public replays averaged 14.60 on-demand views against 3.97 for gated ones, but teams that publish replays may simply have bigger audiences.
Do B2B marketers still use webinars?
About half do. In the Content Marketing Institute's 2024 survey of 980 B2B marketers, 55% used webinars, the same share as in-person events. In 2021, when virtual events, webinars and online courses were one answer, 64% chose it.
Do webinars generate 500 to 1,000 leads?
No study says so. The figure is one customer's quote in GoToWebinar's 2017 Big Book of Webinar Stats, from Mention's head of content, who said one webinar brought between 500 and more than 1,000 leads. Roundups now print it as an average.
