Webinar Statistics (2026): Benchmarks, Trends & What Drives Results

George El-Hage LinkedIn

Founder, Wave Connect | 150,000+ professionals served since 2020

I've worked with thousands of businesses on their digital networking strategies since launching Wave Connect in 2020. I compiled these webinar statistics from the latest industry reports, platform benchmarks, and survey data to help marketers benchmark their programs and find opportunities to improve.

Webinars are one of the fastest ways to turn attention into pipeline, but only if you know what "good" looks like. This webinar statistics report gives you the 2026 benchmarks that matter most: registrations, attendance, engagement, CTA clicks, and cost/ROI, so you can sanity-check your numbers and spot where you're leaking results.

Whether you're building a webinar program from scratch or looking to improve an existing one, these numbers will help your team benchmark against industry standards. We keep things up to date with fresh data every quarter. This is the Q1 2026 edition.

Key Webinar Statistics of 2026 at a Glance

• 87% of businesses now use webinars as part of their marketing strategy, and 52% rank them among their top 3 performing channels.
• Webinar-generated leads move through the funnel ~22% faster than leads from other channels.
• Average webinars attract ~300 registrations, and strong registration pages convert 35-45% of visitors, far above the standard landing page conversion rate.
• 40-50% of registrants attend live, and up to 47% of total views happen on-demand, making webinars a hybrid channel by default.
• Engaged attendees are 30% more likely to convert, and high-engagement webinars can achieve CTA conversion rates of up to 69%.
• Webinars generate leads at ~$72 per lead and deliver 200%-1,200%+ ROI, outperforming trade shows, conferences, and many paid channels.

The State of Webinars in 2026 (Market & Adoption)

Webinars are a core B2B channel in 2026, and the numbers make that clear:

• 87% of businesses use webinars as part of their marketing strategy. (Orange Owl Marketing)
• 52% of marketers say webinars are among their top 3 performing marketing channels. (Content Marketing Institute)
• Webinar-generated leads move through the funnel 22% faster than other channels.

At the market level, growth supports this shift:

• The webinar software market is growing at a double-digit CAGR (12.68%), with projections showing it more than tripling over the next decade.
• Virtual event platforms are growing even faster, at 16.4% CAGR, driven by hybrid events and global teams.
• The global webinar-and-webcast market is projected to reach ~$5B by 2035, growing at ~8% CAGR. (Kenneth Research)
• North America leads in adoption (45% of the global share), while Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region (20% of the global share). (Market Research Future)

How Widely Are Webinars Used in B2B?

In B2B specifically, webinars outperform most other formats where it matters most.

• 56% of B2B marketers used webinars in the last 12 months. (Content Marketing Institute)
• 73% of B2B marketers say webinars generate the highest-quality leads. (ZoomInfo)
• 25% of organizations run 50+ webinars annually, signaling repeatable systems. (Gudsho)

Webinar Registration Benchmarks

Before worrying about attendance, pipeline, or revenue, this is the first question most teams need to answer: Are people actually registering for your webinar?

Average Registrations per Webinar

Here's what current webinar statistics show: BigMarker's 2025-26 benchmark reports 322 average registrants per webinar, up 12% year over year.

What this tells us: Modern webinars don't need massive audiences to be "successful." Hitting close to ~300 registrations already puts you in line with mainstream B2B benchmarks.

Registration Page Conversion Rates

A 35-45% registration rate is commonly cited as a strong webinar registration benchmark. Other recent webinar stats show (Loopex Digital):

• 44% conversion with a short, minimal form
• 38% conversion with a longer lead-gen form
• For comparison, general landing pages (all offer types) convert at a median of ~4-6.6%

Takeaway: Webinar pages convert far above standard landing pages. If you're below 20%, the issue is usually page friction or message mismatch, not demand.

Where Webinar Signups Come From (Channel and Device)

This is one of the few areas where source data is surprisingly consistent (IvyForms):

• ~57-60% of webinar registrations come from email marketing.
• The remaining ~40% comes from other channels:
  • Social media: ~15%, driven primarily by LinkedIn
  • Website placements (banners, CTAs): ~18%, often higher-quality leads
• 22% of webinar registrations come from mobile devices, even though mobile accounts for 62.54% of overall web traffic. (IvyForms)

Takeaway: Email still brings the most webinar signups. The dominant device is a laptop.

Webinar Attendance Benchmarks

• A 40-50% attendance rate among registrants is typical in the industry, with ~49% as the best average estimate.
• Broader webinar benchmarks show 30-40% live attendance across mixed formats.
• 86% watch live, 24% watch only the replay, 14% watch both (overlap expected). (Univid)

• Nearly 47% of webinar views happen after the live event, on-demand. (TwinStrata)
• Attendance per webinar length (Univid):
  • 60-minute webinars reach 62% total attendance, including replays.
  • 90-minute webinars can achieve ~72% live attendance, far above shorter formats.

Webinar Engagement Benchmarks

Webinars are starting to behave like a conversion channel due to proper engagement. The benchmarks below show what interactive webinars look like in real numbers.

Engagement Feature Usage Rates

Per the latest 2026 webinar stats, the rates are as follows (Univid):

• Live reactions: used in 92% of webinars
• Chat: used in 63% of webinars
• Q&A: used in 49% of webinars
• Polls: used in 40% of webinars

Interaction Volume Benchmarks (Polls + Q&A)

The metrics below show how many people interact during your webinar (Contrast):

• Average poll responses per webinar: 87 (all webinars)
• High performers poll responses per webinar: 375
• Average Q&A questions per webinar: 13 (all webinars)
• High performers Q&A questions per webinar: 43

Takeaway: High performers get ~4x more poll responses and ~3x more Q&A. That gap usually shows up later in CTA clicks and lead quality.

How Webinar Engagement Impacts Conversion

Attendees who engage with Q&A, polls, or chat are 30% more likely to convert. Engagement intensity also matters (Univid):

• 0-1 reactions per attendee: <20% CTA conversion
• 5-10 reactions per attendee: 69% CTA conversion

Webinar Timing & Scheduling Benchmarks

Best Days to Send Webinar Invites

• First invite is best sent ~3 weeks before the event, followed by 1-2 reminders closer to the date. (WebinarGeek)
• Best days to send invites are Tuesday-Thursday. (ON24)
• Best send time for invites is 9-11 a.m. ET. (Salesforce)
• The stats shift slightly for reminder emails (ON24):
  • Morning of the event: 7-9 a.m. local time
  • Final "we're live" reminder: 30-60 minutes before start
• Independent B2B studies confirm that Tuesday-Thursday, 9-11 a.m., is the strongest window for action-driven emails.

Best Days to Host Webinars

Most popular days for B2B webinars (Contrast):

• Wednesday: 28%
• Tuesday: 26%
• Thursday: 26%
• Monday: 10%
• Friday: 6%

Best Time of Day to Host

Most popular times for B2B webinars (Contrast):

• 1:00 pm: 15%
• 2:00 pm: 12%
• 11:00 am: 11%
• 10:00 am: 9%
• 12:00 pm: 9%

To cross-check, ON24 also recommends late morning or early afternoon (around 11:00 or 14:00 local time).

Seasonality & Monthly Performance

Based on the latest studies (Univid):

• 43% of webinars are hosted in spring (March-May) and another 43% in fall (September-November).
• Only ~5% of webinars are hosted in summer (July-August), reflecting lower engagement.
• Highest attendance months:
  • January: 51% attendance rate
  • May: 46.3% attendance rate
  • October: 44.8% attendance rate

• Livestorm confirms March, June, and November as peak hosting months, while July and August are consistently avoided.

Webinar Length, Format & Retention Benchmarks

Across platforms, webinar length has standardized. 30-60-minute webinars account for 86% of all webinars. See a more detailed breakdown below (Univid):

• <30 minutes: 1%
• 30 minutes: 27%
• 45 minutes: 24%
• 60 minutes: 37%
• 90 minutes: 5%
• 120 minutes: 2%

67% of people are willing to watch a 60-minute (or longer) video when the goal is learning.

Retention & Drop-Off Behavior

• Average viewing time is ~48-57 minutes for live attendees. (Marketing LTB)
• 57% of attendees stay until the end of the webinar.
• On-demand viewers watch less, about 33 minutes on average. (BrightTALK)
• The highest engagement occurs in the first 30-40 minutes.
• What slows drop-off (Marketing LTB):
  • Q&A increases retention by 32%
  • Chat participation increases watch time by 28%
  • Polls can increase engagement by up to 140%

Webinar Formats Compared

Sources: ON24, Contrast, BigMarker

Webinar Marketing Performance Benchmarks

Webinar Email Performance

Webinar emails consistently outperform regular marketing emails by a wide margin:

• Average marketing email (all industries): 43.46% open rate, 1.27% CTR. (MailerLite)
• Webinar invitation emails: 1.7x higher open rates and 4.5x higher click rates than standard campaigns. (Zoom)

If we translate it into practical benchmarks, well-executed webinar invites often land around ~70-75% opens and ~5-6% CTR, depending on list quality and timing.

Reminder Cadence Benchmarks

The majority of statistics on webinar reminders are consistent (Contrast):

• The average reminder count is ~2 reminder emails per webinar.
• Only 31% of companies send more than one reminder, meaning most stop early.
• A three-step reminder sequence (day before, 1 hour before, 5 minutes before) drives 27% higher live attendance vs fewer reminders.
• BigMarker recommends a 15-30 minute "starting now" reminder as one of the highest-impact notifications. (BigMarker)

Registration Timing Behavior

• ~59% of webinar registrations happen in the final 7 days before the event. (Email Warmup)
• ~13% of registrations happen on the day of the webinar. (Contrast)
• Email remains the dominant driver, responsible for ~77% of webinar signups, making invite timing and reminders critical. (Amra & Elma)

Webinar Conversion & ROI Benchmarks

• The average CTA click-through rate is 8-15% among attendees for typical B2B webinars.
• Strong programs have 20-25% of attendees click the CTA in well-structured, engagement-driven webinars.
• About 47% of webinar attendees qualify as leads in CRM systems.
• 5-20% of webinar attendees convert into paying customers, depending on offer strength and follow-up quality.
• Making webinars available on-demand can increase total views by up to 80%, extending lead generation well beyond the live date.

For context on how webinar leads compare to other event-driven channels, see our event marketing statistics breakdown and trade show statistics for benchmarks on in-person lead costs and ROI.

ROI Benchmarks

• The reported ROI range is 200% to 1,200%+, depending on industry, deal size, and execution maturity. (Marketing LTB, White Hat SEO)
• Webinar-generated leads move through the funnel ~22% faster and contribute to 30-50% shorter sales cycles. (Marketing LTB)
• 80% of businesses report webinars lower their cost per lead compared with other channels. (Entrepreneurs HQ)

Webinar Cost Benchmarks

• The cost per lead (CPL) for an average webinar is ~$72.
• Compared to:
  • Trade shows: ~$198 per lead
  • Conferences: ~$800+ per lead

• Cost per webinar depends on the scale:
  • Typical Range: $450-$4,000 per webinar, depending on tooling, promotion, and production quality.
  • Most Professional B2B Webinars: $1,000-$3,000 per webinar, when staff time and promotion are included.

Webinar Benchmarks by Industry & Team

Industry context and internal ownership of the program both have measurable impacts on attendance, lead quality, and ROI.

Attendance Rates by Industry

Some industries naturally attract higher live attendance because of regulatory pressure, urgency, or required learning (99Firms).

Overall industry average: 46% live attendance rate.

Webinar Usage by Department

Marketing (Amra & Elma, Marketing LTB):

• 62% of B2B companies use webinars for lead generation.
• 95% of marketers consider webinars vital to strategy.
• 73% say webinars deliver their best-quality leads.

Sales (Marketing LTB):

• 52% of companies use webinars to qualify leads for handoff.
• Webinars reduce teams' cost per lead by 78%.

Content, Product & Customer Success (Amra & Elma):

• Webinars are used across ~60% of the customer lifecycle, from education to retention.
• 91% of B2B professionals prefer webinars for learning.

For teams that combine webinars with in-person events, having the right lead capture tools ensures you're not losing contacts between the virtual and live touchpoints.

AI in the Webinar Lifecycle

In 2026, AI is part of webinar infrastructure. Most B2B teams are already using it somewhere in the workflow, and almost all plan to deepen its integration.

This is what the webinar statistics show about the AI adoption curve (White Hat SEO):

• 87% of B2B marketers are already using or testing AI in webinar workflows
• 98% plan to expand AI usage in 2026
• Teams using AI are 7x more likely to hit their marketing goals
• Engagement with AI-generated webinar content grew 7x year over year

AI has also quietly supported personalization. It now tailors subject lines, angles, and copy based on behavior and intent signals (commercetools):

• 63% of AI-using B2B marketers already rely on AI for promotional content generation
• 77% of B2B buying processes used AI in 2025, raising expectations for relevance

Use of AI During Webinars

Live webinars used to be cognitively intensive for hosts, but with AI, that's no longer the case. Real-time transcription and summarization are now baseline features in mature programs, especially for teams running high-volume webinars:

• Automated transcription usage grew 8x among B2B webinar teams in 2025.
• Q&A is another major shift. Instead of scanning chaotic chat feeds, AI now clusters questions, detects themes, and surfaces what actually matters.
• 87% of AI-adopting marketers cite AI-powered Q&A handling as a primary use case.
• 61% of event platforms now offer AI features like Q&A clustering and sentiment analysis.

Use of AI After Webinars

Webinar statistics show that this is the stage where AI delivers the biggest ROI. Instead of a single recording and a generic follow-up email, webinars now automatically turn into entire content and nurture systems:

• Short-form webinar clips grew 2,903% YoY
• Text snippets and quotes extracted from webinars grew 11,464%

Those assets feed blogs, LinkedIn posts, email nurtures, and sales follow-ups.

• 63% of AI-adopting B2B marketers cite webinar repurposing as their primary AI use case.

As of early 2026, AI is embedded throughout the entire webinar lifecycle.

Methodology

Before using any benchmark, it helps to know where the numbers come from and what they measure. This section keeps that transparent.

• Observed platform data: Pulled directly from webinar platforms (ON24, Univid, Livestorm, BigMarker, Zoom). This is behavioral data based on thousands of real webinars: attendance, engagement, CTA clicks, and replay usage.
• Survey / self-reported data: Used for budgets, adoption, and team priorities. Helpful for direction and intent, but less precise than observed behavior.
• Market forecasts: Analyst and vendor projections that show momentum and trends.
• Third-party compilations: Aggregated sources cross-checked against original vendor reports to establish realistic ranges, not single "magic numbers."

Key Takeaways

Now that you've seen the latest webinar statistics and benchmarks for 2026, here's what matters when you step back and look at the data as a whole:

• Webinars work best as a system, not one-off events. Series, reminders, and structured follow-up consistently outperform standalone webinars.
• Engagement helps with conversion. Polls, Q&A, and chat are directly tied to higher CTA clicks and better lead quality.
• Live attendance still matters, but on-demand is no longer secondary. Nearly half of total views and a meaningful share of conversions now happen after the live session.
• From a cost and ROI standpoint, webinars remain one of the most efficient B2B channels, beating trade shows, conferences, and many paid tactics.
• In 2026, AI is part of the baseline. Teams using it across promotion, delivery, and follow-up consistently outperform those who don't.

If you're looking to connect your webinar pipeline to your in-person event strategy, check out our networking statistics and event marketing plan template for a complete picture of how these channels work together.

References

• 99Firms - Webinar Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• Amra & Elma - Webinar Meeting Marketing Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• Amra & Elma - Webinar Funnel Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• BrightTALK - Webinar Benchmark Data - Accessed February 2026
• ClickMeeting - Webinars That Convert - Accessed February 2026
• commercetools - Predictions Shaping B2B Digital Commerce - Accessed February 2026
• Content Marketing Institute - B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks 2024 - Accessed February 2026
• Content Marketing Institute - B2B Content Marketing Trends - Accessed February 2026
• Contrast - Best Time and Day to Host a Webinar - Accessed February 2026
• Contrast - Webinar Benchmarks - Accessed February 2026
• Contrast - Webinar Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• Cvent - Webinar Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• Email Warmup - Best Time to Host a Webinar - Accessed February 2026
• Entrepreneurs HQ - Webinar Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• Event Tech Live - AI and the Reinvention of B2B Events in 2026 - Accessed February 2026
• Future Market Insights - Virtual Event Platforms Market - Accessed February 2026
• Goldcast - B2B Webinar Benchmark Report 2025 - Accessed February 2026
• Gudsho - Webinar Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• HubSpot/BigMarker - 2025-26 B2B Webinar Benchmark Report - Accessed February 2026
• IvyForms - Webinar Registration Forms - Accessed February 2026
• Kenneth Research - Webinar and Webcast Market - Accessed February 2026
• Kevin Harrington - The State of Webinar Usage in B2B Marketing Today - Accessed February 2026
• Livestorm - Webinar Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• Loopex Digital - CRO Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• MailerLite - Email Performance Metrics Industry Benchmarks - Accessed February 2026
• Market Research Future - Webinar Software Market - Accessed February 2026
• Marketing LTB - Webinar Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• ON24 - Best Time and Day to Host a Webinar - Accessed February 2026
• ON24 - Key Takeaways from the 2025 Webinar Benchmarks Report - Accessed February 2026
• ON24 - Best Webinar Email Templates to Boost Attendance - Accessed February 2026
• Orange Owl Marketing - Top B2B Webinar Stats and Trends - Accessed February 2026
• PropPhY - Best Time to Send Marketing Emails 2025 - Accessed February 2026
• Salesforce - Best Time to Send Emails - Accessed February 2026
• Sopro - AI Sales and Marketing Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• Teleprompter - Webinar Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• Univid - Webinar Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• WebinarGeek - Best Time to Send Webinar Invites - Accessed February 2026
• White Hat SEO - Webinar Marketing Strategy - Accessed February 2026
• Wistia - Webinar Analytics Benchmarks - Accessed February 2026
• Zoom - Webinar Statistics - Accessed February 2026
• ZoomInfo - Webinar Metrics - Accessed February 2026