The Webinar Is the New Content Engine (But Most Brands Still Underuse It)

As marketing teams face growing pressure to do more with less, Riverside is challenging the outdated webinar model built on hosting video events. Webinars should function as reusable content engines, not disposable live events that leave teams relying on more tools, complexity, and production costs after the session ends.

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Webinars have become one of the fastest-growing content engines for modern marketing teams, yet many organizations still treat them as one-time events.

Riverside, an AI-powered platform that enables recording, editing, repurposing, and distributing studio-quality content, says that more than half of webinar opportunities in its sales pipeline explicitly mention consolidation or streamlining as a goal.

This underscores a broader shift in how buyers should evaluate webinar software: not as an event-hosting tool, but as content infrastructure. Companies are no longer judging webinar platforms solely by how well they can host a live session. They are judging them by whether that session can create ongoing business value after the event ends.

"A single webinar can generate 20 to 40 content assets across social clips, blogs, newsletters, thought leadership, and sales enablement, yet most brands still capture only a fraction of that," said Abel Grünfeld, Vice President of Marketing at Riverside. "The old model asked teams to absorb all the cost of producing a webinar and then settle for one use. That is not a content strategy. It is waste."

The Cost of the One-and-Done Webinar
That demand for consolidation is showing up because webinar teams are looking for a workflow that helps them extract more value from everything that happens after the event ends. Riverside says that is where most webinar software falls short.

Hosting has improved, but the post-event workflow remains fragmented, forcing teams to move between separate products for editing, clipping, transcription, distribution, and follow-up. That inefficiency carries a measurable cost.

Harvard Business Review reported that workers toggle between applications roughly 1,200 times a day, losing just under four hours a week reorienting after each switch, or about 9% of their working time.

In webinar production, where teams already move across registration, livestreaming, editing, clipping, transcription, and follow-up, Riverside argues that fragmented workflows turn that switching cost into wasted time, wasted budget, and wasted content value.

Socialnomics reported in June 2025 that only 40% of webinar registrants attend live sessions, meaning 60% of the potential audience misses the event in real time. For Riverside, that reinforces the business case for treating these events as reusable content rather than a one-time broadcast.

Where the Webinar Stops Being One-and-Done
Riverside's model is built to simplify that fragmented workflow. Sessions are recorded locally in up to 4K video with separate tracks for each participant and screen, so production quality does not depend on the strength of anyone's connection.

The same session can be streamed live to YouTube, LinkedIn, and other destinations, then edited, transcribed, captioned, clipped, and repurposed from the same workspace once the event ends. Instead of exporting files, re-uploading assets, and stitching together multiple tools, teams can move from a live event to reusable content.

"Running online events is already a heavy lift," Grünfeld said. "Teams should not need multiple specialists, a patchwork of tools, and a post-production backlog just to make one event useful after it ends."

What the Spotify Example Signals About the Market
Riverside's example of how Spotify uses their webinar technology points to a larger shift in how businesses are beginning to think about the format. In Riverside's published case study, Spotify drew more than 400 live attendees from 2,000 signups, then continued extending the webinar's reach through the full recording and highlight clips in the days that followed.

Riverside says the process also eliminated the need for three to four additional tools for activities such as editing, publishing, or captioning, and saved the team 10 to 15 hours from planning through repurposing. Taken together, those results suggest a broader industry change: businesses are evaluating webinars less as isolated events and more as content systems.

For Riverside, that reflects the same shift showing up in its enterprise pipeline. Buyers are increasingly looking for ways to improve content workflows rather than running more isolated events. In this improved model, a webinar is no longer measured only by how many people showed up live, the sound quality, or the number of leads from the event. It is measured by how much value the business can continue extracting once the event is over for weeks or months to come.

"A strong conversation should not disappear after the live slot," Grünfeld said. "It should keep feeding clips, social, follow-up, thought leadership, and sales conversations. That is when a webinar starts becoming an asset."

About Riverside
Riverside is a content creation platform that enables creators, businesses, and media organizations to produce studio-quality audio and video content remotely. The platform combines high-quality local recording, AI-powered transcription and editing, live streaming, and webinar capabilities into a single integrated workflow.

Originally built to solve the challenge of low-quality recordings (for example, due to unreliable internet connections), Riverside now enables creators, marketers, educators, and media organizations to turn conversations into scalable content, from podcasts and webinars to social clips and thought leadership media. The platform is trusted by leading creators and global brands including NPR, Marvel, and The New York Times. Learn more about Riverside.com's webinar software here.

References

• Murty, R. N., Dadlani, S., & Das, R. B. (2022, August 29). How much time and energy do we waste toggling between applications? Harvard Business Review. hbr.org/2022/08/how-much-time-and-energy-do-we-waste-toggling-between-applications
• Sharma, O. (2025, June 21). How to maximize the impact of your webinar by repurposing its content online. Socialnomics. socialnomics.net/2025/06/21/how-to-maximize-the-impact-of-your-webinar-by-repurposing-its-content-online/
• Spotify. (n.d.). In conversation: Riverside x Spotify for Podcasters - How to: [Audio podcast episode]. Spotify. open.spotify.com/episode/6Sbk1Aa0QJaBuGUGHr45bU

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SOURCE Riverside