Marketers are looking to make their company webinars more engaging. That's according to Mark Bornstein, vice president of content marketing at webinar solutions provider ON24.

Expect to see more video webinars in 2018, Bornstein says. And he predicts the increased use of interactive tools, such as social sharing widgets and audience polls, as webinar technology improves. 

Speaking during an ON24 webinar, Bornstein said that the growing presence of Skype and FaceTime in everyday life has warmed up marketers to the idea of video webinars.

As part of this trend, slideless webinars, based around panel discussions and studio-style interviews that generate conversations and allow for audience questions, will rise in prominence.

INCREASING REACH

Bornstein predicts the advent of webinar-only channels, allowing for "binge watching" of webinars in the manner of Netflix. With this in mind, he advises companies to build libraries of on-demand content, organized by topic and by industry.

The live streaming of video webinars on third-party publisher platforms will also become more common. This will give companies a way of increasing reach and growing their lists by attracting new viewers who encounter a streaming webinar while visiting a third party website and decide to click into the event. 

Other webinar trends Bornstein notes: 

• Ongoing adoption by companies of webinar-based product demos.

• Greater focus by marketing on engagement signals such as frequency of webinar attendance and "questions asked" to better qualify leads for sales.

• Integration of video clips, such as product demos, into webinars.

• Ability for participants to schedule a sales meeting during a webinar.

• Use of webinars as a sales tool in targeting high-value ABM prospects.

• Increasing availability of webinars on demand whether or not they initially stream live. 

Currently 61% of webinars are attended live, with 33% accessed on demand, according to ON24 data.