For years, gated content in digital marketing has been a go-to strategy, helping businesses capture leads, build email lists, and nurture prospects.
White papers, eBooks, reports, and webinars were often locked behind forms, requiring visitors to exchange their contact information for access.
But now, buyer expectations are evolving. Users demand instant access to information, search engines prioritize open content, and concerns over data privacy and user experience are reshaping content strategies.
Decision-makers face a critical question: Should businesses continue using gated content in digital marketing, adjust their strategy, or remove gates altogether?
This blog explores the pros and cons of gated content, as well as how businesses can use both gated and ungated content to maximize engagement, visibility, and lead generation in 2025.
Table of Contents
What is gated content?
Gated content in digital marketing is content that requires users to provide information—such as an email address, name, or company details—before gaining access to it.
This strategy is commonly used in B2B marketing to generate leads and nurture potential customers.
The idea is simple: Businesses offer valuable resources like webinars or reports in exchange for a visitor’s contact information, allowing marketing teams to build email lists and qualify potential customers. This approach has worked well for:
- Capturing high-intent leads who were willing to exchange their information for valuable insights.
- Supporting sales teams by identifying engaged prospects who could be nurtured through follow-up campaigns.
- Creating perceived exclusivity, making content feel more valuable due to limited access
Why are businesses reevaluating gated content in digital marketing?
While it can drive lead generation, gated content in digital marketing also creates barriers that may reduce engagement and organic reach, now more so than ever. Customer expectations have changed; users prefer instant access to information and are less likely to fill out forms before seeing value.
In addition, customers today do significant research on their own before they engage with a sales team. If they encounter a form before accessing information, many will leave and find an alternative source. This shift has led to a decline in the effectiveness of gated content.
Still, brands continue to find value in gating content in some instances. Let’s dive into the pros and cons of gated content, and see if there’s still a place for it in your content strategy.
The case for gated content: When it still works
Despite shifts in customer behavior and expectations, gated content in digital marketing is not dead. When used strategically, it remains an effective tool for lead generation and audience segmentation.
Here’s when it makes sense to keep using gated content in digital marketing:
High-value, exclusive content justifies a gate
If your content offers unique insights, exclusive research, or premium-level expertise that is not easily available elsewhere, gating it makes sense.
B2B decision-makers are still willing to exchange their information for actionable, high-value insights that help them make informed business decisions.
Read: ‘Experience Counts: Why Expertise-Focused Thought Leadership Content Matters’
Gated content in digital marketing works best for exclusive reports, industry research, templates, and in-depth whitepapers. Businesses looking for these resources are often serious buyers who need data-driven insights rather than general industry information.
A well-crafted, gated asset can position your brand as an authority and make prospects more likely to engage further.
How to do it right:
- Offer in-depth reports, industry research, or templates that solve real business challenges
- Keep forms short—ask only for essential information like name and email
- Clearly state what the user will gain from the content to reduce friction
Gated content helps qualify high-intent leads
Not all website visitors are ready to buy. Gated content in digital marketing helps separate casual browsers from serious prospects who are willing to provide their details in exchange for deeper insights.
By analyzing who downloads your gated content, you can identify potential buyers, tailor follow-ups, and personalize marketing efforts. This ensures that your sales team is reaching out to qualified leads rather than wasting time on cold prospects.
How to do it right
- Use gated content strategically in the middle or bottom of the funnel (e.g., case studies, product demos)
- Provide immediate value to prevent drop-offs—offer a preview or summary before requiring sign-ups
- Follow up with personalized email sequences to nurture leads based on their interests
Gated content boosts email marketing and retargeting efforts
Gated content feeds your email marketing funnel, giving you a direct way to nurture potential customers. It also enables retargeting efforts, allowing you to reconnect with visitors who didn’t convert on their first visit.
Having an engaged email list means you can provide additional value through newsletters, promotions, and exclusive insights, keeping your brand top of mind.
By combining gated content with retargeting, you can remind users of what they showed interest in and found valuable, increasing conversion rates over time.
How to do it right:
- Segment leads based on the content they downloaded and send targeted email campaigns
- Retarget leads who didn’t complete the form with personalized ads or follow-up offers
- Provide an easy way to opt out or update preferences to comply with data regulations
The case against gated content: Why open access is winning
While gated content in digital marketing has its benefits, the digital landscape is evolving. Many businesses are shifting toward open access models to improve reach, engagement, and brand authority. Here’s why you may want to reconsider gating content:
Search engines favor ungated content
Google prioritizes freely accessible, high-quality content in search rankings. Gated content is often invisible to search engines, meaning it doesn’t contribute to organic traffic, keyword rankings, or long-term discoverability.
If your content is locked behind a form, search engines can’t crawl, index, or rank it, reducing its overall impact.
On the other hand, open content allows your business to rank higher, attract more visitors, and establish brand authority over time.
When content is freely accessible, it’s easier to share across platforms, increasing backlinks, social engagement, and referral traffic—all of which boost SEO performance.
How to get noticed by search engines:
- Optimize your open access content for SEO with keyword-rich content to attract and retain visitors
- Use ungated lead magnets, like embedded call-to-actions (CTAs) within content instead of requiring a form upfront
- When you do use gated content, publish a detailed blog post that summarizes the key takeaways of your gated content
Read: ‘Do You Actively Repurpose Content? Here’s Why You Should Start.’
Gated content requires promotion
Even the most valuable gated content won’t help your business if search engines can’t find it. Since Google can’t crawl gated content, it won’t appear in search results, so potential customers won’t come across it organically.
This means gated content in digital marketing relies solely on direct promotion—such as email marketing, social media, or paid ads—to get traffic. This requires more effort and resources.
By contrast, open content works for you over time, continuously attracting visitors through organic search.
How to maximize organic traffic:
- Repurpose high-value gated content into blog posts, articles, infographics, and other marketing collateral
- Include internal links to your service pages to encourage conversions without blocking content access
- Use open-access reports with downloadable PDFs, so users can choose to save the resource while still benefiting from SEO visibility
Want to increase organic traffic? Try these 10 tips for getting noticed on SERPs .
Higher drop-off rates: Forms drive users away
Users today are less willing to fill out lengthy forms to access content. In fact, studies show that most visitors abandon gated content pages rather than completing a form.
If your content is too difficult to access, users will likely find the same information elsewhere—from a competitor offering it for free.
High drop-off rates mean that gated content in digital marketing can reduce engagement, increase bounce rates, and prevent valuable content from reaching its intended audience.
How to do it right:
- Instead of requiring a form, offer interactive content, such as quizzes or assessments, to capture user interest
- Provide a content preview with an option to subscribe for bonus materials or deeper insights
- Use exit-intent popups or slide-in forms to offer subscriptions instead of locking content upfront
Privacy concerns: Users are more cautious with data
Because of security and privacy concerns, users tend to be hesitant about sharing their personal information. Many visitors avoid gated content due to concerns over how their data will be used, stored, or shared.
Additionally, considering data privacy regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and other consumer protection laws, businesses relying heavily on email capture through gated content may struggle to maintain compliance while keeping users engaged.
Building trust through transparent, open-access content is becoming a stronger differentiator in today’s privacy-focused digital environment.
How to build trust:
- Clearly communicate how user data will be handled when requesting emails or personal information
- Use soft lead capture techniques, like optional sign-ups within freely accessible content
- Offer valuable content without requiring personal details, focusing on building relationships first
AI-driven search & content discovery prioritize ungated content
The way people search for information is changing, with AI-driven tools like ChatGPT, Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience), and voice search leading the shift. These AI tools prioritize open-access content because they rely on indexable, publicly available data to generate answers.
If your best content is locked behind a gate, it won’t be included in AI-generated search results, meaning you miss out on AI-driven discovery.
Ungated content, however, has a greater chance of being referenced, shared, and surfaced in AI-driven searches.
How to get noticed by AI-driven search:
- Publish long-form, high-quality content that AI tools can reference and cite in responses
- Optimize for question-based search queries, making your content more discoverable in AI-driven results
- Ensure your site has structured data and is optimized for conversational search
Read more: ‘Is ChatGPT Telling Customers About You Yet? Optimize for AI Search.’
While gated content in digital marketing can still be effective, businesses that rely too heavily on it may be limiting their reach and engagement. Open content provides greater visibility, stronger SEO performance, and better alignment with AI-driven search trends.
Should you gate content in 2025? Master a balanced approach.
The best strategy isn’t all gated or all open—it’s likely to be a balance.
Use gated content selectively while maximizing your brand’s reach with open-access content.
When use gated content in digital marketing:
✔ High-value assets: Exclusive reports, in-depth guides, and data-driven research provide information users can’t easily find elsewhere, making them worth the exchange of personal details.
✔ Bottom-of-funnel content: Case studies, product demos, and comparison sheets are useful for buyers close to making a purchase, meaning they are more likely to provide their contact information.
✔ Premium resources: Industry research, advanced templates, and toolkits that offer practical, high-value insights can justify the need for user sign-ups.
When to avoid using gated content in digital marketing:
✗ Blog posts & educational content: Open content ranks better in search engines, increasing visibility and engagement while positioning your brand as a trusted authority.
✗ Awareness-stage resources: Infographics, checklists, and introductory guides work best as freely available resources to draw in potential customers and create brand familiarity.
✗ Anything easily found elsewhere: Google favors open access, and users are more likely to find another source if they are met with a gated form for common information.
Tip: To move from gated to ungated content successfully, check out these 6 ways to capture leads with open access content.
Conclusion
There is still a place for gated content in digital marketing but, in 2025, brands must be more strategic.
Instead of locking everything behind a form, focus on delivering value upfront, using a mix of gated and ungated content.
Key takeaways:
- Keep gated content for high-intent leads while making top-of-funnel content accessible
- Prioritize SEO-friendly, open-access content to increase visibility and trust
- Test & refine your approach based on audience behavior and conversion rates
Want to capture leads without content gates? Let’s create a solution that works for your business. Contact us today.
