Disclosure and methodology
Kiin is on this list and publishes it. Every fact about another agency was read from that agency's own site on 17 September 2026; where something is not stated, the entry says so. Nothing here is paid placement.
Scored on: channels run and whether they are run as one programme · what the agency is actually built for (consumer, generalist, B2B) · measurement · pricing transparency · verifiable credentials and clients. Not scored on: size, awards, design.
Two kinds of paid media agency
"Paid media agency" covers two different businesses. The generalists, Found, Impression, Bind, Brainlabs, Croud, Journey Further, run search, social and shopping for retail, travel, finance and consumer apps, with a B2B practice inside. The specialists, Kiin, Gripped, Lever Digital, ToJupiter, only run B2B, where the buyer is a committee, the sales cycle is months, LinkedIn is the channel that can target by job title, and the number that matters is pipeline from the CRM rather than ROAS. A consumer brand should hire from the first group. A B2B software company should hire from the second, or at least ask a generalist who on the team has run LinkedIn to a pipeline number. Both groups are on this page, labelled.
What paid media actually costs in the UK
Every agency on this page will quote you a fee. Almost none will tell you what the media underneath it costs, or how the UK compares with the markets you might also be buying. These are the measured figures.
| Market (single country campaigns) | CPM | Landing page CTR | Cost per landing page click | Cost per lead | Accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | $47.31 | 0.25% | $20.69 | $383 | 89 |
| United States | $92.01 | 0.23% | $46.98 | $809 | 322 |
| Germany | $31.71 | 0.09% | $26.62 | $342 | 49 |
| Netherlands | $23.71 | 0.16% | $12.64 | $545 | 83 |
| France | $25.31 | 0.15% | $14.13 | — | 27 |
| Denmark | $100.68 | 0.12% | $57.96 | — | 36 |
| Sweden | $209.89 | 0.16% | $87.68 | — | 29 |
| India | $13.52 | 0.14% | $9.31 | — | 17 |
- The United States costs 2.3 times the UK per landing page click, $46.98 against $20.69, and 2.1 times per lead, $809 against $383. If you are a UK company being advised to lead with the US, that is the price of the decision, on 322 and 89 advertiser accounts.
- The UK has the best landing page click through rate of any major market at 0.25%, marginally ahead of the US at 0.23% and well ahead of Germany at 0.09%. British buyers are not harder to move; they are cheaper to reach and slightly more responsive.
- The Nordics are the expensive trap. Sweden at $87.68 a click and Denmark at $57.96 cost more than the US. Small professional populations and thin inventory, not better audiences.
- Germany looks cheap on CPM at $31.71 and is not cheap on clicks at $26.62, because the click through rate is 0.09%. The Netherlands at $12.64 and France at $14.13 are the genuinely efficient European markets.
Source: Kiin Intelligence panel. 1,000+ advertiser accounts, 22,942 campaigns and $79 million of measured LinkedIn spend across 1.34 billion impressions in the twelve months to 7 September 2026. Medians across advertiser accounts, never pooled totals. LinkedIn Audience Network delivery excluded. An account count sits beside every figure, and anything built on fewer than about ten accounts is a direction rather than a number. Fuller tables and method: LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks 2026.
The part your agency probably does not own
Across 119 advertiser accounts with real booking data, the gap between the cheapest and dearest cost per booking is 121 times. Here is where that gap actually comes from.
| Accounts grouped by cost per booking | Cost per booking | Cost per landing page click | Bookings per 100 landing page clicks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest quartile | $269 | $25.22 | 8.9 |
| Dearest quartile | $32,653 | $37.62 | 0.1 |
| The gap | 121 times | 1.5 times | 72 times |
- Traffic price explains 1.5 times of it. Conversion rate explains 72 times. The page you send paid traffic to is worth roughly fifty times more attention than the bid.
- Most paid media agencies are contracted for the 1.5. They are measured on cost per click, they move it, they report an improvement, and the pipeline does not change. Everyone is doing their job and the outcome is still bad.
- Ask any agency on this page who owns bookings per 100 landing page clicks. If the answer is nobody, or it is split between them and your web team, that is your largest available improvement and no amount of bid management substitutes for it.
The agencies
1. Kiin — best for B2B SaaS paid media with LinkedIn as the engine
The specialist on a page of generalists. Kiin does not run retail, apps or consumer brands: every account is a sales-led B2B company, LinkedIn is the demand engine, Google captures the intent it creates, and Meta and Reddit keep the warmed audience seeing you at a fraction of LinkedIn's CPM, all off one account list and reported as pipeline from the CRM. It also publishes the benchmark research a buyer can hold any agency to.
Tradeoff: we wrote this list. And if you sell to consumers, every other agency on it is a better fit than we are.
2. Found — best for London performance agency across search, social and AI discovery
Found is a full-service performance agency with a specific point of view on discovery, that search now includes social and AI answers, and the awards and partner status to match. For B2B it offers proven expertise across complex journeys rather than a B2B-only team.
Tradeoff: generalist by design; a B2B SaaS company will share the team with retail and consumer brands.
3. Impression — best for established paid media team across London and Nottingham
A large, long-established UK digital agency whose paid media practice sits beside SEO and digital PR. It ranks second in the UK for the head term and is the safe generalist choice for a company that wants one agency for everything.
Tradeoff: not B2B-specific; expect a broad client base.
4. Bind Media — best for multi-platform paid media with creative and CRO attached
Bind covers more platforms than most UK agencies and pairs media with creative and CRO. Its LinkedIn offer specifically mentions AI qualification and automated follow-up triggers, which is more than most generalists say about the channel.
Tradeoff: ecommerce and consumer results dominate the case studies.
5. Brainlabs — best for large-budget, multi-market media with published pricing principles
Brainlabs is the scaled option: a global media agency with an experimentation culture and a stated transparency policy on fees and media. B2B SaaS is one sector among six.
Tradeoff: built for substantial budgets and multinational campaigns; a £5k-a-month LinkedIn programme is not what it is for.
6. Croud — best for global media, creative and data with an on-demand specialist network
Croud's model is a core team plus a large network of vetted specialists it can deploy per market or platform, which makes it unusually scalable across countries and languages.
Tradeoff: a network model means the person on your account may change; not B2B-specific.
7. Journey Further — best for performance media with a discovery-signals methodology
Journey Further has re-organised around discovery rather than channels, diagnosing where growth is constrained, then deploying media and creative against the signals that determine how people and platforms find a brand. For a company thinking about AI search alongside paid, the framing is current.
Tradeoff: generalist client base; B2B is not the stated specialism.
8. Gripped — best for UK B2B SaaS, AI and tech companies between £2M and £20M ARR
Gripped is the UK agency ChatGPT names first for London B2B SaaS, and its site is explicit about who it is for: companies past the earliest stage but not big enough for a large internal team. Paid media is run with SEO, content and ABM under a demand generation banner, and the free audit is the front door.
Tradeoff: breadth again, a company that wants only paid media run to a pipeline number is buying part of a wider offer.
9. Lever Digital — best for UK B2B SaaS paid acquisition with senior specialists and no fixed-term contract
Lever's pitch is senior people and a month-to-month relationship. The Uplisting case is the one to read, a four-year engagement from early stage to a business doubling revenue year on year, with a 5x increase in free trials a month, and Sprintlaw went from a loss-making Google Ads account to its leading new-business channel.
Tradeoff: the site describes paid search and paid acquisition broadly; LinkedIn is not called out as a specialism, and there is no pricing.
10. ToJupiter — best for embedded demand generation for pre-seed to Series C SaaS
ToJupiter's model is a demand gen team plugged into yours with a shared Slack channel, founder accountability and weekly sales syncs, rather than an agency account team. Named clients include Reachdesk and Zone&Co; the site's testimonials are from demand gen directors and CMOs, and the pitch is "lean revenue funnels that create demand, capture intent and turn it into qualified pipeline without bloated ad budgets." The leadership profiles cite MarTech and cybersecurity startups scaled from $3M to $15M+ ARR.
Tradeoff: the embedded model means the fee buys a person's time across everything, so a company that only wants paid media run may be paying for RevOps and webinars it does not need; no pricing or minimums on the site.
11. BARK — best for paid social and creative for consumer brands
On this list for completeness: BARK ranks for the UK head term, and it is a strong paid social and creative shop for ecommerce and consumer apps. It is not a B2B agency and does not claim to be.
Tradeoff: consumer-only case studies; the wrong fit for B2B.
Side by side
| Agency | Built for | Meta / social | B2B | Published pricing | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kiin | B2B SaaS only | Core | Yes | Yes | Only | $5,500 a month, published; stepped tiers above $10,000 media per platform |
| Found | Generalist | Yes | Core | Yes | Practice within a generalist | No |
| Impression | Generalist | Yes | Core | Yes | No dedicated practice stated | No |
| Bind Media | Generalist | Yes | Core | Yes | Some | No |
| Brainlabs | Generalist (large) | Yes | Yes | Yes | One sector | Transparent policy, not published |
| Croud | Generalist (global) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Some | No |
| Journey Further | Generalist | Yes | Yes | Yes | Some | No |
| Gripped | B2B SaaS, AI, tech | Yes | Yes | Yes | Only | No |
| Lever Digital | B2B-leaning PPC | Yes | Core | Yes | Mostly | No |
| ToJupiter | B2B SaaS demand gen | Yes | Yes | — | Only | No |
| BARK | Consumer | — | Yes | Core | No | No |
Seniority barely moves the price in the UK
The received wisdom is that senior targeting is expensive, and agencies price the assumption into their recommendations. On UK campaigns it is not true.
| Seniority targeted | Cost per landing page click | Landing page CTR |
|---|---|---|
| Partner | $21.39 | 0.31% |
| Owner | $22.10 | 0.26% |
| CXO | $23.44 | 0.22% |
| VP | $24.02 | 0.24% |
| Director | $24.88 | 0.25% |
| Senior | $25.61 | 0.23% |
| Manager | $26.38 | 0.24% |
The whole range is $21.39 to $26.38, a 23% spread from the cheapest seniority to the dearest, and Partner is the cheapest while Manager is the most expensive. There is no seniority premium in the UK auction. If an agency proposes widening to managers to bring your costs down, that recommendation makes your targeting worse and your costs slightly higher.
Figures are medians across advertiser accounts from our own panel: 1,000+ advertiser accounts, 22,942 campaigns and $79 million of measured LinkedIn spend across 1.34 billion impressions in the twelve months to 7 September 2026. Never pooled totals. LinkedIn Audience Network delivery excluded.
What the inbox placement costs in the UK
| Outcome | Median cost |
|---|---|
| Conversation ad cost per lead | $200 |
| Demo request, inbox placement | $566 |
| Call booking, inbox placement | $342 |
| Lead gen form, UK campaigns | $170 per lead |
The inbox is the most underused placement in UK B2B and the one with the widest spread between the best and worst accounts. The lever is the audience rather than the bid: retargeting pools beat uploaded lists consistently, and bidding higher buys almost nothing. Note the gap between a demo at $566 and a call at $342 for the same placement, which is the price of what you ask for, not who you ask.
How to choose
- Who do they run media for? Look at the case studies, not the services page. If the wins are ecommerce ROAS and app installs, that is the agency's muscle.
- "Who decides how much moves from Google to LinkedIn each month?" One person with a name, or four specialists each optimising their channel.
- "Do you report clicks or landing page clicks?" On LinkedIn the difference is 3 to 10 times. The LinkedIn Ads benchmarks give the numbers to check against.
- "Is the fee published, and is media marked up?" Two agencies on this page publish a price; Brainlabs publishes a no-markup policy. Everyone else, ask.