The benchmarks
See how different types of content perform in your industry, across a range of key measures
You can compare the performance of your own content to the benchmarks on the following pages to identify opportunities for improvement.
We’ve split the results by word count, whether they’re gated or ungated, and by industry to capture a complete view of what contributes to successful content.
All benchmarks shared herein are averages, unless otherwise stated. Here’s a quick rundown of the metrics we’ve captured:
Bounce rate: The percentage of readers that left the publisher’s domain immediately after reading a document
Number of readers: The total number of people that read a document
Interaction rate: The percentage of readers that engaged with one or more interactive elements within a document
Total read time: The total number of minutes documents were read for across our data set
Read time: The average number of minutes a single reader spend reading a document
Sign-up rate: The percentage of readers that shared their personal information through sign-up forms within each interactive document
Click the graph to explore further
Raw data
At all document lengths, ungated documents generate lower bounce rates and higher interaction rates – which are largely to be expected.
However, at higher word counts, gated docs attract a higher number of readers, and are read for longer.
That suggests readers perceive longer, gated content has higher quality, and is valued more highly by readers.
While white papers, guides, research reports, and other long-form content takes greater resources to produce, the benchmark data suggests that the effort may well be worth the reward.
If you’d like to explore the data in more detail – or look at data for documents that exceed 8000 words, contact us.
Gated documents are used widely across information-critical industries like finance, professional services, and legal, indicating strong perceptions of content value.
But gated content is almost completely ignored in education and retail, where ungated content attracts high reader numbers.
Deeper exploration is needed to understand the content types driving high engagement in retail, high interaction in legal, and very low bounce rates in retail and travel.
Word count
Bounce rate [%]
Number of readers
Interaction rate [%]
Total read time [min]
Read time [min/reader]
Sign-up rate [%]
Up to 1000
25.1%
178
77.4%
808.2
4.5
0.84%
1000-2000
24.7%
263
77.5%
1157.4
4.4
0.75%
2000-3000
24.0%
202
73.9%
1030.0
5.1
0.85%
3000-4000
24.8%
249
67.9%
1418.8
5.7
0.71%
4000-5000
23.7%
264
71.8%
1598.1
6.0
0.41%
5000-6000
23.9%
246
87.7%
1694.3
6.9
0.57%
6000-7000
26.3%
234
80.4%
1481.3
6.3
0.50%
7000-8000
26.7%
67.8%
1719.0
6.5
0.59%
Back to graph
37.9%
93
61.6%
459.8
4.9
34.0%
255
74.0%
1530.9
33.9%
175
64.1%
1035.7
5.9
415
36.7%
2316.8
5.6
34.5%
519
51.0%
3353.0
39.4%
319
68.0%
2154.0
6.8
35.7%
265
59.4%
1472.7
38.7%
997
52.4%
7178.9
7.2
Agency
22.9%
73
66.3%
444.6
6.1
0.74%
Automotive
22.2%
491
63.8%
1919.8
3.9
0.62%
Construction
22.7%
65
64.8%
354.4
5.5
0.64%
Education
16.7%
185
55.4%
992.5
5.4
1.85%
Finance
25.0%
194
72.9%
1190.5
1.11%
Food & Beverage
30.0%
131
81.1%
614.3
4.7
0.89%
Life Sciences
16.6%
232
54.3%
878.2
3.8
0.33%
Manufacturing
24.2%
121
70.7%
582.9
4.8
1.13%
Media
33.3%
76.2%
1342.0
1.25%
Professional Services
24.4%
126
49.1%
753.5
Recruitment
24.9%
59
75.2%
378.7
6.4
0.78%
Retail
11.8%
409
254.0%
4661.3
11.4
2.90%
Technology
28.6%
172
96.9%
1099.6
Telecoms
97
82.5%
459.0
0.88%
Travel
16.3%
485
1439.8
3.0
0.39%
Other
20.2%
243
94.0%
1401.4
5.8
0.61%
33.2%
357
45.8%
2144.9
36.3%
621
63.6%
3299.7
5.3
38.3%
48
74.3%
241.1
37.6%
5
60.9%
17.2
3.7
661
55.3%
4559.3
38.4%
137
60.7%
970.6
7.1
Insurance & Risk
27.4%
396
2002.3
Legal
29.6%
359
112.8%
1852.3
5.2
27.6%
138
55.6%
655.7
19.5%
77
44.4%
296.5
54.0%
209
73.6%
1319.3
30.3%
445
57.6%
2821.4
45.1%
148
82.8%
719.9
18.0%
23
221.7%
168.9
7.3
113
61.5%
549.8
46
99.3%
205.3
35.6%
55
71.9%
259.8
29.5%
180
68.7%
610.1
3.4
