Read you later: Data study shows delay between gated content download and consumption

Registrations for gated content dipped in 2025; prospects and customers download and read a week later

Marketing faces a lot of pressure to demonstrate results. Accordingly, the benefit of gating content is the production of a signal to measure.

As a result, marketing philosophies about gated content often split into two camps: gate everything or gate nothing.

I’m of the mind that it’s about balance. Gated content has a place under the umbrella of a larger content strategy. That’s where the annual Netline study of gated content is most useful.

Netline makes a marketing platform that, in part, enables marketers to measure content downloads. Once a year, they aggregate and anonymize the data to produce a trend report.

The 2026 report I’m covering here is based on a data analysis of content downloads made in 2025. It’s worth pointing out that this is behavioral data, as it’s based on actions content consumers took rather than their opinion in response to a survey.

Below are a few findings that stood out to me.

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1. Registrations for gated content slides lower

Fewer people registered for gated content in 2025. The volume of downloads was down 8.6% from 7.9 million in 2024, to 7.2 million in 2025.

Commentary: While marketing benefits from obtaining contact information from gated content, it also adds friction that reduces reach. There’s a sense that gating content ensures only those who are truly interested will register for it, but it’s worth challenging that assumption.

Distrust is a default mode, and businesses have a history of taking unwanted liberties with contact information. As a result, people are loath to provide it.

Two rules of thumb can help drive the decision to gate content. First, the content should be unique. If the information is available elsewhere, there’s little incentive to register for it.

Second, the purpose of the piece should drive whether or not to gate it. Content aimed at building awareness can’t do its job behind a registration gate. Content aimed at conversion might suggest the content consumer has a genuine interest.

2. Download now; consume a week later

People who download content don’t read it for about a week later. The time between download and consumption grew from 38.5 hours in 2024 to 47.7 hours in 2025. That works out to 5.96 days, or about a week later.

The type of content matters. As the chart nearby depicts, playbooks are read an average of 20.6 hours later; trend reports are read 22 hours later, and case studies are read 28.7 hours later.

Commentary: This should inform your BDR/SDR follow-up strategy. The classic play is to have them call anyone who downloads gated content 24 hours later to see if they are interested in buying their product.

Most people just wanted to see the content; buying a software product is probably 10 steps away. It’s like going from ‘hello to a marriage proposal’ in a download.

Give those who download content a chance to read it first. When you follow up, consider the next logical step. That’s the whole point of researching and visualizing a buyer’s journey – to map content needs with the prospect’s stage.

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3. One-fifth of downloads are for content about AI

Content about AI accounted for 21.1% of all downloads in the report. This is similar to the same findings last year, when this category of content spiked.

Commentary: Marketing should keep an ear out for AI fatigue. The internet has been on an AI content streak since November 2022. Much of it has been overhyped.

There’s also a notable twist in the public narrative. Some of the biggest names in AI have been preaching that AI is going to take everyone’s job. Of course, nobody wants to lose their job, and that’s having an impact on sales and adoption. Gen Z is allegedly resisting AI.

Smart marketers will ensure messaging around AI tools focuses on how AI will augment their abilities, not replace them. The track record so far suggests this is what’s actually happening as well, so such a claim is more factual, from my view of the landscape.

4. Ebooks once again the most downloaded format

Ebooks accounted for about half of all content downloads on the Netline platform in 2025. This was true in 2024 and in 2023 as well.

Here’s the breakdown of the most downloaded content formats:

ebook 48.8%
cheat sheet 9.3%
guide 7.5%
white paper 4.8%
report 3.7%
article 3.5%
tips and tricks guide 2.4%
on-demand webinar 1.7%
webinar 1.4%
playbook 1.4%

Commentary: I’ve got to wonder if ebooks are the most downloaded asset because that’s the asset marketers are most comfortable making. As the old saying goes, when everyone zigs, that’s your chance to zag. Be sure to experiment with alternate formats.

One other crucial point here is content repurposing. A good webinar can be parlayed into ebooks, articles, guides and infographics. In other words, it’s not about which format is better, but how to use them together.

I also encourage marketing teams to treat this as an ongoing program, rather than a campaign that starts and ends. One approach relies on iteration and keeps going, while the other is a full start and stop.

5. On-demand webinars top live

Overall webinar downloads grew 5.3% according to the report. However, registrations for live webinars dropped notably (-22.9%) while on-demand webinars grew substantially (54.3%).

Commentary: This finding is consistent with the overall conclusion – people download now and consume later. That’s an important factor that should drive content strategy.

It’s unlikely your customers and prospects are sitting at a desk reading your ebook. Instead, they’ve saved it for later and are reading it at home, on the subway, or while waiting to pick the kids up from practice.

The promise of gated content

The promise of gated content is useful information in exchange for contact information. B2B marketing has to ensure its content meets those expectations, or risk turning “read you later” into read you never.

For those interested in reading more on this study later, Netline summarized the findings and has a link to download the report here.