Gated vs ungated content statistics at a glance
| Category | Statistic | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Split test | Ungating case studies produced 62% more downloads; gated case-study downloaders sent 13% more demo requests | Dynamic Yield, 2018 |
| Single company | A gated ebook converted 106 of 3,400 visitors (3.1%) at $143 per lead, self-reported by the CMO | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024 |
| Single company | After ungating everything, demo requests rose 265% and pipeline 242% year over year | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024 |
| Forms | The median landing page converts 6.6% of visitors, across 41,000+ pages | Unbounce, 2024 |
| Forms | Forms complete at 51.7% on average across 93 million tracked sessions | Zuko, 2026 |
| Forced sign-up | 18% of US shoppers who abandoned a checkout for a reason other than browsing left because the site wanted an account | Baymard Institute, September 2025 |
| Buyers | 37% of B2B buyers are very likely to fill a form for high-value content; 61% are very likely to engage with ungated content | Demand Gen Report, 2023 |
| Buyers | 38% of software buyers are less likely to buy if they must contact sales for a demo or trial | TrustRadius, 2023 |
| Trust | 71% of customers feel increasingly protective of their personal information | Salesforce, November 2024 |
| Anonymous research | 94% of buying groups rank preferred vendors before first contact | 6sense, 2025 |
| AI research | 51% of B2B software buyers now start research in an AI chatbot, up from 29% in April 2025 | G2, April 2026 |
| Lead quality | 34% of gated-content registrants expected to make a purchase decision within 12 months | NetLine, 2025 |
| Marketers | 45% of B2B marketers rate e-books and white papers among their most effective content types | Content Marketing Institute, 2024 |
| Computed | One company's gated ebook lost about 31 visitors for every lead it captured | Blue Triangle data via Vende Digital, computed |
Is there a study that tests gated vs ungated content head to head?
Only two published tests compare gated and ungated versions of the same content, and both come from single companies: Dynamic Yield's 144-day split test from 2018 and Blue Triangle's full ungating in 2023, reported in 2024.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| Dynamic Yield served gated landing pages to 50% of visitors and ungated versions to the rest for 144 days. Ungating case studies produced 62% more downloads. | Dynamic Yield, October 2018 |
| In the same test, ungating guides and research reports produced 15% more downloads. | Dynamic Yield, 2018 |
| People who downloaded a case study through a form sent 13% more demo requests than people who got it ungated. For guides the difference was 4% and inconclusive, so Dynamic Yield kept guides behind a form. | Dynamic Yield, 2018 |
| Blue Triangle spent $15,000 over five weeks promoting a gated ebook. It drew 3,400 landing page visitors and 106 downloads. | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, October 2024 |
| The gated campaign cost $143 per lead. | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024 |
| An ungated ebook, promoted with $2,000 over two and a half weeks, drew 175 people "engaging meaningfully" at $11.44 per engagement. The post doesn't define an engagement. | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024 |
| After Blue Triangle ungated all of its content in Q2 2023, demo requests rose 265% year over year. | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024 |
| Pipeline grew 242% year over year over the same period. | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024 |
| Marketing-sourced revenue rose 41 times. | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024 |
| Pages per session rose fivefold after the gates came down. | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024 |
| The share of pipeline from ideal-customer-profile accounts rose to 90% from 60%. | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024 |
Both results carry a label you shouldn't drop. Dynamic Yield's test is eight years old and ran on one company's traffic. Blue Triangle's numbers are self-reported by its CMO, Chuck Moxley, in an October 2024 post by Vende Digital, a consultancy that sells ungating strategy, and a year-over-year pipeline jump has more causes than one content change.
I'd read these two tests as agreeing more than they disagree. Dynamic Yield found that removing the form lifts consumption and that the people who do fill the form are slightly warmer, which is the whole trade in miniature. Blue Triangle bet that reach compounds into pipeline faster than form fills do, and for a company selling to a defined account list, that bet paid. Neither test tells you what happens to a company with no sales team to follow up.
The next question is how many people a gate turns away in the first place, which is where form benchmarks come in.
How many visitors fill out a gated content form?
The median landing page converts 6.6% of its visitors, according to Unbounce's 2024 benchmark of more than 41,000 pages, so at that median about 93 of every 100 visitors leave without converting.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| The median landing page conversion rate across all industries is 6.6%, from 41,000+ landing pages, 464 million unique visitors and 57 million conversions. | Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report, 2024 |
| 83% of landing page visits in Unbounce's data happened on mobile, while desktop converted about 8% better than mobile. | Unbounce, 2024 |
| Blue Triangle's gated ebook page converted 106 of 3,400 visitors, a 3.1% form completion rate. | Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024 |
| Across 93 million form sessions, Zuko's benchmark puts the average form completion rate at 51.7%. | Zuko form benchmarking, accessed September 2026 |
| Registration forms complete at 60.7% of starters, contact forms at 47.4% and enquiry forms at 42.7%. | Zuko, 2026 |
| 18% of US online shoppers who abandoned a checkout, excluding those just browsing, left because the site wanted them to create an account. | Baymard Institute cart abandonment research, updated September 2025 |
| 17% of the same shoppers left because the checkout was too long or complicated. | Baymard Institute, 2025 |
Two very different numbers sit here, 6.6% and 51.7%, and both are right. Unbounce divides conversions by everyone who lands on the page; Zuko counts only people who already started the form. Most visitors never touch the form, and about half of those who do still leave. Zuko is a form analytics vendor and publishes the benchmark as a live page without a data period, so treat it as a vendor benchmark. Unbounce's report dates from 2024, just outside this page's 24-month window. Baymard measures ecommerce checkouts and doesn't print its survey sample, so treat it as a proxy for a forced sign-up.
The Unbounce median includes every kind of landing page, from free trial signups to webinar registrations, and a cold ebook gate usually sits below it. Blue Triangle's 3.1% is what I'd expect from paid traffic to a gated asset. When someone tells you gating "only" costs a few points of conversion, ask which denominator they used.
Conversion rates tell you what visitors do; buyer surveys tell you why, and that's the next section.
How willing are B2B buyers to fill out a form for content?
Only 37% of respondents to Demand Gen Report's 2023 Content Preferences Survey say they are very likely to fill out a form for high-value gated content, against 61% who are very likely to engage with ungated content.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| 48% of B2B buyers are somewhat willing to fill out a form for a gated asset, 37% are very likely to complete it for high-value content, and 15% are unlikely to. | Demand Gen Report, March 2023 |
| For non-gated content, 61% are very likely to click on and engage with it, 33% somewhat likely and 7% not likely at all. The methodology describes the 120 respondents as B2B marketing professionals. | Demand Gen Report, 2023 |
| 100% of technology buyers want to self-serve all or part of the buying journey, in a survey of 1,604 buyers. | TrustRadius B2B Buying Disconnect, June 2023 |
| 38% of buyers say having to contact sales for a demo or free trial would make them less likely to purchase. | TrustRadius, 2023 |
| Only 15% of buyers consult vendor-driven marketing materials when making a purchase decision; 60% of vendors publish blogs, but 5% of buyers consult them. | TrustRadius, 2023 |
| 75% of consumers won't buy from companies they don't trust with their data. | Cisco Consumer Privacy Survey, October 2024 |
| 51% of the consumers Cisco classes as "Privacy Actives" have switched companies over data privacy practices. | Cisco, 2024 |
| 71% of customers feel increasingly protective of their personal information, and 64% believe companies are reckless with customer data, in a survey of 15,015 consumers and 1,570 business buyers in 18 countries, fielded July to August 2024. | Salesforce State of the AI Connected Customer, 7th edition, November 2024 |
| 73% of US adults feel they have little or no control over the data companies collect about them, and 67% understand little to nothing about what companies do with it. | Pew Research Center, October 2023 |
The Demand Gen Report and TrustRadius figures are from 2023, older than this page's 24-month window, and nobody has published a newer survey that asks buyers the gating question directly. Demand Gen Report's sample of 120 is small, too, and although the report calls them buyers, its methodology describes B2B marketing professionals. I've kept both sources because they are the only primary ones that ask the gating question at all.
A note on fake form data: many gating posts claim buyers often type throwaway emails into forms. I found no current public B2B survey with a stated sample that measures this, so this page gives no number.
The DGR numbers look friendly to gating until you put the two parallel questions side by side: the "very likely" group shrinks from 61% to 37% the moment a form appears, even though the gated question only asks about high-value content. That 24-point drop falls on your best-disposed readers, the ones you most want. And the Cisco, Salesforce and Pew figures explain the mood behind it. People haven't stopped reading; they've stopped trusting what happens to their email address.
Buyer reluctance matters more when most of the buying journey happens where no form can reach, which the next section measures.
How much B2B research happens before a buyer fills out a form?
B2B buyers complete about 60% of their buying journey before contacting a seller, and 94% of buying groups have ranked their preferred vendors by then, according to 6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report of more than 4,000 buyers.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| The split between independent research and seller engagement moved from 70/30 in 2024 to 60/40 in 2025. | 6sense Buyer Experience Report, November 2025 |
| 94% of buying groups ranked their preferred vendors before first contact with a seller. | 6sense, 2025 |
| Buyers purchased from that preliminary favourite 77% of the time. | 6sense, 2025 |
| Buyers initiated first contact 83% of the time, in a survey of 934 buyers fielded in summer 2023. | 6sense, January 2024 |
| 78% of technology buyers selected products they had heard of before starting their research. | TrustRadius, June 2024 |
| 51% of B2B software buyers now begin software research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google, up from 29% in April 2025, in a March 2026 survey of 1,076 buyers. | G2, April 2026 |
| 71% of B2B software buyers rely on AI chatbots for software research. | G2, 2026 |
| 69% of buyers chose a different software vendor than they first planned based on AI chatbot guidance. | G2, 2026 |
| 75% of decision-makers and C-suite executives say a piece of thought leadership led them to research a product they were not previously considering. | Edelman and LinkedIn, February 2024 |
The 6sense numbers describe when buyers talk to sellers, not when they fill out forms. But 83% of first contacts come from the buyer, and 94% of shortlists are set before that contact. A gated asset only earns its form fill if it gets read early enough to shape the shortlist.
The G2 figures add a newer problem: an AI chatbot can quote a public page, but it can't read a PDF behind a form. The Edelman and LinkedIn figure dates from February 2024, older than two years.
This is the section that changed my own view. When most of the decision happens in private, and more and more of that private research runs through ChatGPT, a gated asset is invisible exactly when it could matter most. I'd still gate things, but only what a buyer wants after the shortlist exists, not what helps them build it.
Reach is only half the argument for gating, though; the other half is lead quality, and the data there is thinner.
Do gated content leads turn into pipeline?
Only 34% of professionals who registered for gated B2B content in 2024 expected to make a purchase decision within 12 months, according to NetLine's 2025 report on 8 million content registrations; NetLine puts the other 66% more than a year out.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| NetLine recorded 8 million first-party content registrations in 2024, up 27% year over year and 84% since 2019. | NetLine State of B2B Content Consumption and Demand, 2025 |
| The average gap between requesting a gated asset and opening it widened from 31 hours in 2023 to 39 hours in 2024. | NetLine, 2025 |
| 34% of registrants expected to make a purchase decision within 12 months (8% within three months, 10% in three to six, 16% in six to 12), down 3% from 2023. | NetLine, 2025 |
| 66% of registrants put their purchase timeline at more than a year, NetLine's own figure. | NetLine, 2025 |
| eBooks made up 53% of all registrations, yet eBook registrants were 12% less likely to signal a purchase decision within 12 months. | NetLine, 2025 |
NetLine runs a gated content syndication network, so its data comes from the people who did fill the form, and the purchase timeline is what they selected at registration, not a separate survey. That makes it the right source for lead quality and the wrong one for reach. It's also worth knowing that the NetLine report itself is an ungated PDF.
Put the lead-quality numbers from the other sources next to it. Dynamic Yield's form fillers sent 13% more demo requests, a real but modest edge. Blue Triangle's pipeline share from ideal-customer accounts rose to 90% from 60% after ungating, which suggests the gate had been filtering for willingness to fill forms rather than for fit.
A gated lead is a signal of interest, not of timing. Two thirds of NetLine's registrants weren't planning to buy within a year, and the gap before they even opened the asset is now 39 hours. If your sales team calls those leads within the hour, they're calling people who haven't read what they asked for.
Marketers see the same tension from their side of the funnel, and the Content Marketing Institute measures it every year.
What do B2B content marketers report about gated assets and leads?
74% of B2B marketers say content marketing helped generate demand or leads in the previous 12 months, according to the Content Marketing Institute's 2025 B2B benchmark of 980 respondents, while 56% struggle to attribute return on investment (ROI) to content.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| 87% of B2B marketers say content marketing created brand awareness in the last 12 months, and 74% say it generated demand or leads. | Content Marketing Institute, October 2024 |
| Marketers rate videos (58%) and case studies (53%) as their most effective content types; e-books and white papers and research reports each sit at 45%. | Content Marketing Institute, 2024 |
| 56% of B2B marketers cite difficulty attributing ROI to content efforts. | Content Marketing Institute, 2024 |
| Only 51% strongly or somewhat agree that their organisation measures content performance effectively. | Content Marketing Institute, 2024 |
CMI's 2025 report doesn't ask whether marketers gate content, but it hints at why they keep doing it: the formats that traditionally sit behind forms, e-books, white papers and research reports, still rank among the types marketers rate most effective, and a form fill is the easiest result to count when ROI is hard to prove. Ungated programmes usually replace that count with a "How did you hear about us?" field, covered on our dark funnel statistics page. For the return side of the argument, see the content marketing ROI statistics page.
Gating survives in a lot of companies because it produces a number the CFO understands, not because anyone proved it works. I don't say that as a criticism. If you ungate, you owe your leadership a replacement metric on day one, or the gate will be back by the next budget cycle.
With the sources in place, here is how the four computed figures on this page were built.
How we calculated the original numbers
Here's the arithmetic behind the four computed figures, each built from a single source, so you can check it or change the inputs.
- 31 visitors left per lead. Blue Triangle's gated ebook drew 3,400 landing page visitors and 106 downloads, as CMO Chuck Moxley told Vende Digital (October 2024). (3,400 − 106) / 106 = 31.1 visitors who left for each download, or one download per 32 visitors (3,400 / 106 = 32.1) and 3.1% completion. This is a single-company, self-reported result.
- An ungated engagement cost about 8% of a gated lead. Blue Triangle's gated campaign cost $143 per lead ($15,000 over five weeks); a later ungated ebook test cost $11.44 per engagement ($2,000 over two and a half weeks, 175 engagements). 11.44 / 143 = 0.08, so each gated lead cost about 12.5 times as much. A lead is a named contact; the post never defines an engagement, and the two figures come from separate campaigns. Read it as the price of learning a name, not as the same result getting cheaper.
- About 14 visitors leave per conversion at the median landing page. Unbounce's 2024 median conversion rate is 6.6%. (100 − 6.6) / 6.6 = 14.2 visitors who don't convert for each one who does. The Unbounce median covers every kind of landing page, not only gated content.
- A 24-point drop in the most willing readers. Demand Gen Report's 2023 survey asked the same 120 respondents two parallel questions: 61% were very likely to click on and engage with non-gated content, and 37% very likely to complete a form for high-value gated content. 61 − 37 = 24 points, a 39% relative drop (24 / 61). The gated question covers only high-value content, which should favour the form, so the gap is conservative.
What the 2026 numbers say
Gating trades reach for names, and the exchange rate is steep. One company's self-reported numbers put it at 31 lost readers per lead, and the Unbounce median says most gates turn away more than nine in ten visitors. Dynamic Yield's test is the fairest counterweight: form fillers are warmer, by about 13% on demo requests. Warmer, yes. Thirty-one times warmer, no.
The buying journey moved to places a form can't reach. Buyers set 94% of shortlists before contacting anyone, and half of software buyers now start in an AI chatbot. A PDF behind a form doesn't exist for either of those audiences. The 2023 buyer surveys already showed the reluctance; the 2025 and 2026 data shows where buyers went instead.
The honest answer to "gated or ungated" is "which asset, for whom". Dynamic Yield ungated case studies and kept guides gated. Blue Triangle ungated everything but added an optional "email this to me" prompt. Nobody in the data gates everything and wins. My default for 2027: ungate what helps a buyer build a shortlist, gate what helps them choose once they have one, and measure both with the same pipeline report. For more on why proprietary data earns links and citations when it's public, see our original research content statistics, or browse all marketing statistics pages.
FAQ
What percentage of visitors fill out gated content forms?
6.6% is the median landing page conversion rate across 41,000+ pages, according to Unbounce (2024). One published gated ebook converted 3.1% of visitors, or 106 of 3,400 (Blue Triangle via Vende Digital, 2024). Both numbers divide by everyone who reached the page, not only people who started the form.
Does ungated content generate more leads than gated content?
62% more downloads came from ungated case studies in Dynamic Yield's 144-day split test (2018), while gated downloaders sent 13% more demo requests. Blue Triangle reported demo requests up 265% and pipeline up 242% a year after ungating everything (2024). Both are single-company results.
How many readers does gating content lose?
About 31 visitors left for every lead in one published case, computed from Blue Triangle's gated ebook: 3,400 visitors and 106 downloads (Vende Digital, October 2024). In that campaign, 96.9% of visitors who reached the landing page left without the asset. At Unbounce's 2024 median conversion rate of 6.6%, the same maths gives about 14 visitors turned away per conversion.
Are B2B buyers willing to fill out forms for content?
37% of B2B buyers are very likely to fill out a form for high-value content, against 61% very likely to engage with ungated content, according to Demand Gen Report (2023). 15% say they are unlikely to complete a gate at all. The survey covered 120 B2B professionals.
Are gated content leads good quality?
34% of gated-content registrants expected to make a purchase decision within 12 months, according to NetLine's 2025 report on 8 million registrations. NetLine puts the other 66% more than a year out, and eBook registrants were 12% less likely to signal a near-term purchase. Gated leads show interest, but most are not in a buying cycle.
How much of the B2B buying journey happens anonymously?
About 60% of the B2B buying journey happens before a buyer contacts a seller, according to 6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report of 4,000+ buyers. By first contact, 94% of buying groups have already ranked their preferred vendors, and they buy from that favourite 77% of the time.
Sources
- Dynamic Yield, Deflating the gated vs ungated content debate (October 2018, archived copy; the original URL now redirects)
- Vende Digital, Ungated Content Best Practices (Blue Triangle case, as told by CMO Chuck Moxley) (October 2024)
- Unbounce, Conversion Benchmark Report (2024)
- Zuko, Form Type Benchmarking (live benchmark, accessed September 2026)
- Demand Gen Report, 2023 Content Preferences Survey Report (March 2023)
- TrustRadius, 2023 B2B Buying Disconnect (June 2023)
- TrustRadius, 2024 B2B Buying Disconnect: The Year of the Brand Crisis (June 2024)
- Cisco, How safe is our data? Consumers want to know (2024 Consumer Privacy Survey) (October 2024)
- Pew Research Center, How Americans View Data Privacy (October 2023)
- 6sense, 2025 Buyer Experience Report press release (November 2025)
- 6sense, Don't call us, we'll call you: when B2B buyers reach out to sellers (January 2024)
- G2, The Answer Economy: How AI Search Is Rewiring B2B Software Buying (press release) (April 2026)
- LinkedIn and Edelman, 2024 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report summary (February 2024)
- NetLine, 2025 State of B2B Content Consumption and Demand Report (2025)
- Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content Marketing: 2025 Benchmarks and Trends (October 2024)
- Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics (last updated September 2025)
- Salesforce, State of the AI Connected Customer, 7th edition (November 2024; fielded July to August 2024)
Methodology. Numbers were collected in September 2026 and checked against the original publisher's page, report PDF or press release, not against other statistics roundups. Stats farms were excluded, and so was one widely repeated "CMI 2025" gating statistic that does not appear in CMI's report. The 17 documents come from 15 publishers (two TrustRadius reports, two 6sense pieces; Blue Triangle's case is counted with Vende Digital, and Edelman and LinkedIn once). Single-company results are labelled as such, and vendor benchmarks (Zuko, NetLine, Unbounce, Baymard) are named as vendors. Figures older than 24 months are flagged in the text and marked DATED in the data file; no newer survey asks buyers the gating question directly. The four computed figures each use one source only. Last updated 24 September 2026.