LinkedIn advertising benchmarks

As a specialized LinkedIn advertising agency, we've managed hundreds of campaigns. At this point, we have a pretty good idea of how much it costs to get results. In this guide, we're sharing real cost data from our campaigns, an overview of how pricing on LinkedIn works, and a guide to setting a budget for your own LinkedIn campaigns. 

Note: for a full overview of costs associated with LinkedIn advertising PLUS a guide on how to assess your results, check out our free Benchmarking report.

LinkedIn ad costs (2025 data) 

Based on our analysis of 500+ campaigns managed through our methodology, here are the median LinkedIn advertising costs for 2025:

• Cost Per Click (CPC): $7.63
• Cost Per Conversion: $549.51
• Cost Per Lead: $932.18
• Cost Per Mille (CPM): $85.24
• Cost Per Video View: $0.51 

Sample monthly LinkedIn advertising budgets

One of the most common questions we get is: "How much should I spend on LinkedIn ads?" The answer depends on your business size, goals, and market maturity. But that answer isn’t terribly helpful. So here is an example of the kind of budgets we usually see, keeping in mind that we’re speaking in broad strokes and the actual budget and allotment will depend on the specific account: 

Startup (<$5,000) 

• Sample campaign mix: 70% lead generation, 30% web traffic
• Targeting: narrow (1-3 job titles, specific industries)
• Creative testing: 2 to 3 variations

Mid-level ($5,000-$10,000)

• Sample campaign mix: 50% lead generation, 30% web traffic, 20% retargeting
• Targeting: medium (3-5 audiences with different messaging)
• Creative testing: 5 to 8 variations with A/B testing

Enterprise (>$10,000)

• 40% lead generation, 25% Account-Based marketing, 20% brand awareness, 15% retargeting
• Targeting: Sophisticated audience layering, multiple TAMs
• Creative testing: continuous testing and variations across all copy and creative

Factors that impact LinkedIn advertising costs

Job titles

• Broad titles (Manager, Director): Lower cost, higher volume
• Specific titles (VP of Sales Operations): Higher cost, better quality
• C-Suite targeting: 40-60% cost premium but higher conversion rates

Company size

• 1-10 employees: Lowest cost, often unqualified
• 11-50 employees: Moderate cost, good for SMB focus
• 51-200 employees: Sweet spot for many B2B companies
• 201-500 employees: Higher cost, enterprise prospects
• 500+ employees: Highest cost, largest deal sizes

Geographic region

• North America: Highest costs, mature market
• Western Europe: 20-30% lower than North America
• Asia-Pacific: 40-50% lower, growing market
• Emerging markets: 60-70% lower, limited targeting options

How ad bids work on LinkedIn

LinkedIn uses a second-price auction model where advertisers compete for ad placements by bidding on actions like clicks or impressions. Your actual cost isn’t just your bid. It’s determined by what it takes to beat the next-highest bidder, plus relevance factors.

 This means you can win auctions at a lower price than your bid if competition is weak, but you’ll pay more in competitive segments. High bids improve delivery by making you more competitive in auctions, but without proper controls, they can drive up average costs quickly. Managing bids carefully is essential to balance delivery volume with cost efficiency.

Guide to LinkedIn bidding strategies 

LinkedIn offers three main bidding options. Each controls how your budget is spent and determines both cost per result and required management effort.

Maximum delivery (automated delivery) 

• How it works: LinkedIn sets bids automatically to get as many results as possible within your budget.
• Cost: typically 10–20% more per result than manual bidding. LinkedIn will pay higher prices in auctions to maximize delivery.
• When it makes sense: when you want volume and don't want to manage bids manually. Useful for new campaigns or when testing audiences.
• Bottom line: You’ll spend your budget quickly and reliably, but at a higher average cost per result.

Manual bidding

• How it works: you specify the maximum amount you're willing to bid for each click, impression, or send.
• Cost: manual bids make it easy to anticipate how much a campaign will cost and keeps you from over-spending. But if your bid is too low, you risk under-delivery.
• When it makes sense: when you want to control costs tightly and don't mind checking in every day and making adjustments.
• Bottom line: less spender, but requires active hands-on optimization.

Cost cap

• How it works: you set a target average cost per result. LinkedIn tries to maximize delivery while staying at or below that cost.
• ‍Cost: Helps heep average costs predictable, but delivery may slow if auction prices rise above your cap.
• When it makes sense: you want to scale campaigns while enforcing a strict cost ceiling.
• Bottom line: balances cost control with delivery. You sacrifice some volume flexibility to keep costs in check.

LinkedIn advertising vs. other platforms

More expensive, but more lucrative

LinkedIn charges a premium price because it’s built to reach valuable decision-makers and professionals. It is the only platform with the innate ability to deliver niche B2B audiences with precise targeting by industry, job title, or company size. These audiences have higher deal values and longer sales cycles. 

It's for this reason that, on the surface, LinkedIn can seem like a more expensive option. However, while this may be true for TOFU (Top of Funnel) costs, our data shows LinkedIn provides better outcomes at the BOFU (Bottom of Funnel) level. This, of course, is what actually affects your bottom line. This is why we recommend LinkedIn as the best platform for teams looking to forgo vanity metrics and instead show ROI.

LinkedIn provides better outcomes at the BOFU (Bottom of Funnel) level. We recommend LinkedIn as the best platform for teams looking to forgo vanity metrics and instead show ROI.

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How to calculate ROI on LinkedIn ad campaigns

To assess LinkedIn advertising ROI for our clients, we use LTV:CAC. LTV (Lifetime Value) refers to the amount that a customer spends over the course of their lifetime. In B2C, this is usually a one-time or recurring purchase. In B2B, it’s usually a monthly subscription cost. 

We then compare that with CAC (Cost of Acquisition). The gold standard is 3:1, i.e., where you get $3 back for every $1 you invest in advertising.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much should I budget for LinkedIn ads per day?

LinkedIn requires a minimum daily budget of $10, but most budgets start at $50-$100 per day.

What's the minimum budget to see results?

For B2B lead generation, we recommend a minimum of $2,000-$3,000 per month. Anything less doesn't provide enough data for optimization or meaningful lead volume. Consumer-focused campaigns might work with lower budgets, but B2B requires higher investment due to longer sales cycles and higher-value prospects.

How do LinkedIn ads charge you?

LinkedIn uses objective-based pricing. You're charged based on your campaign objective:

• Website Visits: Pay per click
• Lead Generation: Pay per lead form submission
• Brand Awareness: Pay per 1,000 impressions
• Video Views: Pay per view (3+ seconds)
• Sponsored Messaging: Pay per message sent

Can you advertise on LinkedIn for free?

No, LinkedIn doesn't offer free advertising like Google Ad Grants. However, you can:

• Post organic content to build audience
• Use LinkedIn's free job posting feature
• Engage in LinkedIn groups and discussions
• Leverage employee advocacy programs

For paid advertising, LinkedIn requires a credit card and minimum daily budgets.

Why are LinkedIn ads more expensive than [insert platform]?

LinkedIn ads cost more because:

• Professional audience: Higher-value prospects command premium pricing
• B2B focus: Smaller audience pool increases competition
• Targeting precision: Ability to target specific job titles and companies
• Platform positioning: LinkedIn positions itself as a premium professional network

The higher cost is often justified by better lead quality and higher conversion rates for B2B companies (see chart above).

How long before I see results from LinkedIn ads?

Timeline expectations:

• Week 1-4: Initial data collection, campaign setup
• Week 4-6 First optimization round, early results
• Month 2-3: Meaningful data, performance trends
• Month 4-6: Optimized performance, scalable results

B2B sales cycles mean you might not see closed deals for 3-6 months, but you should see lead generation within the first month.

LinkedIn advertising isn't cheap, but it doesn't have to break the bank either. The key is understanding that you're paying for quality, not quantity. When executed properly, LinkedIn ads deliver some of the highest-quality B2B leads available.LinkedIn advertising is worth the investment when:

• You're targeting B2B decision-makers
• Lead quality matters more than lead volume
• You have a clear value proposition for professionals
• Your average deal size justifies higher acquisition costs
• You can commit to 6+ months of consistent testing and optimization

Ready to Get Started?

If you're ready to make LinkedIn advertising work for your business, we're here to help. As a specialized LinkedIn advertising agency, we've helped hundreds of companies navigate the platform's complexities and achieve profitable growth.

Our Customer Generation methodology focuses on precision targeting and continuous optimization to maximize your LinkedIn ad ROI. We don't just manage campaigns—we become an extension of your marketing team, providing strategic insights and hands-on execution. Click here to book a call with our friendly sales team.

If you were to ask B2B marketers what their most important channel to invest in was this year, they’d probably say LinkedIn. And that makes sense. There is a lot that makes this platform desirable.

LinkedIn stands apart not just for its targeting options or bidding models, but because it’s one of the few places online where professionals are primed to think about work before they even log in. It’s a lot easier to grab attention when you’re not competing with a video of a family of raccoons throwing a party on somebody's patio.

The trouble is, while LinkedIn is a platform that we at Abe believe in so much that we literally built an agency for it, we will be the first to admit that it is not the easiest channel to use. Appearances can be deceiving if you're not looking at the right metrics or models. Understanding how well you’re doing on LinkedIn requires context, which, until now, was hard to find. 

Fortunately, we’ve developed a LinkedIn Advertising Benchmarks for B2B report, drawing on a large sample of real client campaigns to provide meaningful reference points for budget planning, performance reviews, and strategic decisions.

We’ve made the main takeaways public in this article, but if you’re running LinkedIn ads, please do grab a copy of the free report once it's live. We worked hard to make sure it would be jam-packed with information to help you on your way.

Where do these benchmarks come from? 

This data comes from real campaigns run by yours truly as well as our sister agency, Directive Consulting.

The data comes from brands with monthly LinkedIn budgets ranging from $3,000 to $300,000. It spans small businesses and enterprise players, with a strong focus on B2B SaaS. All results were cleaned for outliers and anonymized to ensure data integrity and privacy.

The goal isn’t to prescribe a single “ideal” number, but to provide realistic, defensible ranges that marketers can use to evaluate their own performance.

How to use benchmarks

Effective data analysis depends on context. Your data storytelling is only as good as your details. A good example of this is if you were presenting on LinkedIn advertising costs. On the surface, it might seem expensive, but that would only be the case if you're looking at lead costs comparative to other platforms. If you look at lead quality, suddenly LinkedIn looks like the most valuable channel to ever exist.

Your data storytelling is only as good as your details.

Benchmarks won't tell your unique story for you, but they will help you provide relative measures. As marketers who are relying on reporting to convey how well you're hitting your KPIs, we hope these benchmarks will help you to: 

• Set expectations that stakeholders can understand
• Identify underperforming areas worth optimizing
• Justify budget allocation with credible industry data

LinkedIn benchmarks by metric

Cost Per Click (CPC): Around $4.34

• Reflects the price to generate a single click. Higher than many social platforms, but typical for LinkedIn’s professional audience.

Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM): Approximately $85.24

• Reflects the price to generate a single click. Higher than many social platforms, but typical for LinkedIn’s professional audience.

Cost Per Lead (CPL): Roughly $550

• A typical cost to capture a qualified lead. While this can seem high, it often reflects better sales conversion rates downstream.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): Typically ~0.66%

• LinkedIn CTRs tend to be lower than channels with broader audiences, reflecting its niche professional targeting.

These are overall medians—but the report also includes low-range and high-range values, showing the variability you might expect depending on your industry, offer quality, and targeting strategy. For instance:

• CPL values can range from ~$335 on the low end to $885 or higher in more competitive contexts.
• CPM can range from ~$56 to $144 or more, depending on audience granularity and creative impact.
• CTR typically ranges between ~0.46% on the low side and over 1% in well-optimized campaigns.

These spreads help marketers understand not only what’s “typical,” but what’s possible with strong creative, targeting, and value propositions.

Ad type-specific callouts

Conversation Ads

• Median CPC: ~$3.23
• Median Cost Per Lead: ~$884
• Median Open Rate: ~40.9%
• Notes: Strong open rates reflect the direct-message format, but CPL can be higher due to the need for personalized offers and incentives.

Sponsored Content

• Median CPC: ~$11.16
• Median Cost Per Lead: ~$1,192
• Median CPM: ~$32.66
• Median CTR: ~0.56%
• Notes: A flexible format for both awareness and engagement, with performance shaped heavily by creative quality and audience targeting.

Matching ad types to funnel stages

One of the most consistent findings in our work is that LinkedIn ad performance can’t be separated from funnel stage strategy. Different formats excel at different goals. Most brands will want to do a mix of around 70% lead generation, 30% awareness. The exact blend will depend on your brand notoriety and market penetration. We would virtually never recommend that a brand spend nothing on brand awareness.

Most brands will want to do a mix of around 70% lead generation, 30% awareness.

Top of Funnel (TOFU)

• Goal: Build awareness among target audiences
• Formats: Sponsored Content, Video Ads
• Metrics to watch: Impressions, CPM, reach
  

Even for cautious budgets, allocating some spend to brand awareness campaigns supports long-term efficiency by increasing recognition before asking for a conversion.

Middle of Funnel (MOFU)

• Goal: Capture interest and generate leads
• Formats: Document Ads, Lead Gen Forms
• Metrics to watch: Cost Per Lead, conversion rate

This is the stage for value exchanges: offering genuinely useful content in return for contact information. Whether it's a whitepaper, webinar, or other gated resource, the content needs to answer real questions your audience has.

Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)

• Formats: Conversation Ads, ABM campaigns
• Metrics to watch: MQLs, SQLs, Opportunity creation

Here, relevance is everything. Conversation Ads, for example, work best when they feel personal and include compelling incentives—like free trials, credits, or carefully considered offers that encourage direct engagement.

It’s also important to recognize that performance varies significantly by ad format. Below are a few sample median metrics from our dataset, showing how costs and engagement typically differ across common LinkedIn ad types:

Conclusion

It’s easy to think of benchmarks as just numbers on a page. But they’re really about enabling better choices.

By understanding typical cost ranges and outcomes, marketers can communicate performance more credibly, plan budgets based on evidence,

• Communicate performance more credibly internally
  
• Plan budgets based on evidence, not guesswork
  
• Spot opportunities for incremental improvement

LinkedIn remains one of the most valuable platforms for B2B marketing, but also one of the hardest to get right. If you don't have a LinkedIn advertising expert on your team, Abe would love to fill in any gaps you're experiencing. Get in touch with our friendly team today.

For marketers worldwide, LinkedIn is heralded as the most important platform to master. But does this sentiment hold up under scrutiny? We took to the proverbial streets to find out what those in the weeds truly think about the potential for LinkedIn to deliver on business goals. Here's what they said.

On transcending the "job board" mindset: 

''What I wish I had known — and what other people should know — is that LinkedIn is a great platform for growing your business and it is not strictly a corporate job-seeking business-focused social platform. You can build a community and you can build your business with LinkedIn alone." - Alexis Quintal , Rosarium

Abe’s reaction

We like to think of LinkedIn’s advantages as falling into one of two categories.

On one side, you have the external advantages that you can apply to the platform (like strategy or methodology).

On the other side, you have LinkedIn’s very real inherent advantages that make it a good investment before your approach even hits the table. One of these inherent advantages is that LinkedIn is the only social media platform where people go in expecting to talk shop, not watch cat videos. We couldn’t agree more with Alexis.

On the humility to be proven wrong

"I was surprised to learn that most people reading my articles were not the buyers but someone on their behalf. I used to write my articles expecting the freight managers or the heads of procurement to read them.

I then discovered the actual conversations and questions were from their assistants, advisors, or individuals from the same department observing quietly. It shifted the way I wrote my articles. I made the words straightforward and emphasized clear outcomes. This resulted in more referrals and fewer cold starts." - Allan Hou, TSL Australia

Abe's reaction

We often find ourselves telling our clients that we are (ironically!) the worst people to make assumptions about the behavior that our ICP will engage in. And it’s not because we’re not good at our jobs. It’s because we’re too in it!

Much like we sometimes need a close friend to tell us something about our own lives that we are unable to see ourselves, we often need to take a step back and observe our ICP without preconceived notions. This takes a degree of humility, but if you get into that mindset, you might be surprised at what you learn. 

On thinking outside of the post

Conventional wisdom said, flood LinkedIn with posts, daily if possible. It’s what’s supposed to drive reach. But the real shift came when I dialed back and focused on something less obvious: strategic commenting. 

Instead of scattershot content, I mapped out a list — a handful of industry folks, a few possible client companies — and made it a habit to actually contribute to their posts. Not generic, “Nice post!” stuff, either. Instead, taking the time to add a dissenting idea, or to flesh out a point left hanging.

Profile visits increased. The right kind of DMs landed, too. It became a testing ground: refining your ideas in front of peers without burning out on your own content treadmill." - Yevhenii Tymoshenko, Skylum

Abe's reaction

We love this idea from Yevhenii because it brings up the most important attribute of networking of any kind: authenticity.

When you’re sharing opinions you actually care about with people who are well positioned to care, that’s where the magic happens. And where you’re much less likely to be accused of being a bot programmed to comment “great post!” 10,000 times.

On why brand advertising remains relevant

“Early on I was way too focused on perfecting my posts and waiting for the ‘right moment’. But instead, I found out that by being regular, even with simple, natural updates, the momentum would be there quicker. Publishing about projects, lessons learned, and wins contributed to raising our engagement by approximately 22% for six months.

For someone who is beginning, I’d say keep up with your real story, make sure your content is relevant to your audience, and don’t hesitate to display the human face of your business." -Daniel Roberts, Dan Roberts Marketing

Abe's reaction

Imagine you had to sit through an award ceremony — an Academy Awards or a Grammy’s, if you will — and all the hosts did was rattle off stats. Boring, right? You don’t watch these shows to know how many tickets a movie sold or how many streams a single received. That might be an interesting supplemental detail, but it’s not what makes the event special. You tune in for the story and the passion. 

As Daniel eloquently states, brand marketing lives by the same rules. Don’t put your accolades or even your features at the forefront. Decide what your purpose is, what your belief is relevant to that purpose, and proliferate it to the highest degree possible. Your audience will follow, more tuned in than ever.

On resisting the urge to Cmd C + Cmd V

"For the new ones, be patient and try out. What will go down well with a specific group of people may not necessarily work in the same way with another group of people, hence the need to try using different content, messaging and the best times of posting will be a good idea.

This trial and error process is one of the elements of developing a LinkedIn strategy that will work." - Tracie Crites, HEAVY Equipment Appraisal

Abe's reaction

As tempting as it is to adopt a copy cat approach, this is good advice from Tracie. When we analyze competitors for our clients, we always make it clear that we are only seeing a sliver of the entire picture. While we can see what’s going on on the outside, we can’t see in their first-party analytics, their CRM, or their business goals. These are important determinants in how any strategy will perform. It’s best to stick to your own parameters.

On relying on empathy above all

"Our bios are about US but for THEM. In other words, you should promote yourself but think about how that serves a potential employer or client or customer. What are they struggling with that you can help them with?" - Danielle Z Hughes,  More Than Words

Abe's reaction

This comment from Danielle gave us pause, because it’s not one that we hear spoken of often. But it is actually such a uniquely good point. The ability to take a step back and ask yourself what kind of clients you want to work with, or what kind of customers you want to attract, is a necessary way to make sure that you're fulfilling real business goals to the depth of their potential. Otherwise, your performance might look okay on paper, but actually distracted you from your greater purpose.

Let Abe help you scale with LinkedIn advertising

If you want to elevate your platform with a LinkedIn advertising strategy that will land you a steady flow of ideal-fit clients for your business and maximize your ROI — talk to us. Our true, unfiltered thought on LinkedIn is that we know how to win.

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