Benchmarks: How Well Are Your Webinars Performing?

We were just scheduling our next webinar yesterday and discussed some benchmarks about attendance, promotion, and duration… and then I just received this today! ON24 released the 2015 edition of its annual Webinar Benchmarks Report, which analyzes key trends observed in ON24 customer webinars over the last year.

Webinar Performance Benchmarks Key Findings

• Webinar Interactivity – 35% percent of webinars integrated social media applications, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and 24 percent of webinars used polling as a way to directly engage audience members. Q&A remains the most popular interactivity tool at 82%.
• Webinar Video Usage – saw a dramatic rise, from 9% in 2013 to 16.5% in 2014, due to the evolution of video technology, reduced costs, and the ability to reliably push video without bandwidth constraints.
• Webinar Audience Size – There has been a marked increase in large webinars. In 2013 only 1% of webinars drew more than 1,000 attendees, while in 2014 9% of webinars passed the 1,000 mark. This increase signifies that webinars that draw more than 1,000 attendees are no longer limited to events held by large enterprise brands.
• Viewing Duration – average webinar viewing times continue to defy the industry trend around snackable content that appeals to limited attention spans. Compared to an average of 38 minutes in 2010, average live webinar viewing has steadily risen and is now holding steady at the 56-minutes mark, indicating that webinars continue to grow in importance as buyers self-educate as they work towards a purchase decision.
• Viewing Times – Webinars held on Wednesdays and Thursdays have the highest attendance, followed closely by Tuesdays. In North America, webinars held at 11:00 a.m. PT/2:00 p.m. ET have the highest attendance.
• Attendence versus Registration – Between 35% and 45% of registrants for marketing webinars attend the live event. This conversion rate has held steady for several years.