LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks 2026: CPC, CTR, CVR by Industry

Headline LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks

LinkedIn does not publish an average cost per click or click-through rate on its website or help pages. The figures that exist come from companies that measure their own customers' accounts. The most detailed of the sources checked here is Metadata's 2026 B2B Paid Media Benchmark, covering 138 B2B advertisers' LinkedIn spend in 2025: $9.39 per click, a 0.67% click-through rate, a $63.19 CPM and $202 per lead.

Metadata's figures are spend-weighted, so its biggest spenders count most. Dreamdata's 2026 report, from its own B2B customers, puts cost per click lower at €5.98 and CPM at €34.33. The two samples differ in size, currency and possibly method, so a gap of this kind is normal. Quote the source and period with the figure.

What a LinkedIn Lead Costs

A single average hides a wide spread. Metadata ranked each advertiser by its own LinkedIn cost per lead: the advertiser in the middle paid $376, nearly double the spend-weighted $202, and the most expensive tenth paid more than $1,340. Large advertisers with lower costs pull the weighted figure down.

Retargeting was dearer than prospecting in Metadata's LinkedIn data, at $234 against $194 per lead.

Benchmarks by Industry

None of the sources checked for this page publishes dated LinkedIn benchmarks for a long list of industries; The B2B House lists 12 industries but gives no period. Metadata splits its data into three advertiser groups: B2B technology, financial services and everyone else. Financial services advertisers paid the most, at $11.82 per click and $417 per lead, from a small group of 11 advertisers.

ZenABM publishes medians by LinkedIn industry for companies running account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns, which target named company lists and are mostly B2B SaaS. Its figures are medians per company, so they are not comparable with Metadata's spend-weighted ones.

Cost per Lead by Company Size

In Metadata's data, advertisers with 51 to 200 employees paid the least per LinkedIn lead ($144), and cost per lead was higher in each of the larger size bands, though it did not rise steadily. Cost per click stayed between $9.46 and $11.45 across the bands.

Benchmarks by Ad Format

Document ads produced the cheapest leads in Metadata's 2025 data, at $142 against $200 for single image and $265 for video, with the highest click-through rate (1.23%). Carousel ads were the most expensive per lead, at $668. Conversation Ads and Message Ads are charged per send rather than per click, so only their cost per lead is comparable with the feed formats.

Lead Gen Forms vs Landing Pages

LinkedIn's Lead Gen Forms open inside LinkedIn with the member's profile details filled in. In Metadata's 2025 data they produced leads for $193, against $346 when the ad sent clicks to a landing page. LinkedIn's own blog gives an average Lead Gen Form conversion rate of 13%, but states no period or sample.

Check the denominator before comparing conversion rates. LinkedIn's conversion rate divides conversions by clicks, while its lead form completion rate divides submissions by form opens. A form completion rate will usually look higher than a conversion rate from the same campaign.

LinkedIn vs Other Channels

LinkedIn clicks cost far more than Facebook or Instagram clicks, but cost per click is not the whole picture. In Metadata's B2B sample, LinkedIn's $202 per lead was above Facebook ($145) and Instagram ($138) but well below Google Ads ($524). Metadata also traced $10.20 of pipeline to each $1 of LinkedIn lead-generation spend among advertisers who connected their CRM.

For the other platforms, see our Google Ads benchmarks and Facebook ads benchmarks.

What Changed Year on Year

Dreamdata is the only source here with two consecutive editions of the same report. Between its 2025 and 2026 reports, LinkedIn cost per click rose about 12% and CPM about 29%, while click-through rate edged up from 0.51% to 0.57%. Metadata's 2026 benchmark has no comparable earlier edition.

Costs also move within the year. Across HockeyStack's B2B SaaS customers, the average cost per click was lowest in the first quarter ($10.48) and highest in the third ($15.72). These are averages from about 70 B2B SaaS companies over three years, and the report's text refers to 2023 and 2024, so they are older than the other figures here and run above them.

Benchmarks by Region

Regional cost data is thin. The agency Huble publishes its 2024 client results by region in pounds sterling: single image clicks cost £4.34 in North America against £1.55 in Asia-Pacific. It does not state how many clients or campaigns the figures cover. LinkedIn's Pressroom gives member counts by region, which show where the audience is but not what it costs to reach.

Message Ads, Conversation Ads and Video

Since July 2024, LinkedIn no longer reports click or impression metrics for Message Ads and Conversation Ads, so older "Message Ad CPC" figures have no current equivalent. LinkedIn says more than one in two prospects open a Message Ad, without a date or sample.

On its call for the quarter to December 2025, Microsoft cited 30% growth in LinkedIn paid video ads. In Huble's 2024 client data, video ads had a click-through rate of 0.20%, against 0.39% for single image ads.

What LinkedIn and Microsoft Report

Microsoft reports LinkedIn revenue as one line: $19.8 billion in the fiscal year to June 2026, up 11%. That figure includes subscriptions and recruiting products as well as advertising. Microsoft has attributed recent growth mainly to Marketing Solutions, LinkedIn's advertising business, but does not report its revenue, ad prices or ad volumes.

How LinkedIn Charges

LinkedIn ads are sold by auction, so there is no list price. LinkedIn says cost depends on demand for the target audience, the bidding strategy, the objective and the ad's relevance. One detail changes how to read "cost per click": Sponsored Content ad sets on automated (Maximum delivery) or cost-cap bidding are charged per impression, so their reported cost per click is spend divided by clicks rather than a price per click.

For targeting options that affect cost, see our guide to LinkedIn job and seniority targeting in Microsoft Ads.

How to Use These Benchmarks

Compare like with like. Metadata's own LinkedIn cost per lead is $202 spend-weighted but $376 for its median advertiser, so a spend-weighted figure (Metadata) and a median across companies (ZenABM) should not be compared directly, and euro, pound and dollar figures cannot share a column. Use cost per lead or pipeline for lead-generation campaigns, and treat click-through rate and CPM as delivery checks.

Campaign Manager's industry benchmark compares your ad sets with similar ones from the last 90 days, which is often a better yardstick than any published average. For newer ad products, see our guide to LinkedIn's Creator Marketplace and BrandWorks.

Widely Quoted Figures, Checked

Several LinkedIn Ads statistics circulate without a source, or with a source that says something different. Each one below is checked against the publisher's own page.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of the sources below.