100 LinkedIn Ads Statistics for 2026

The median LinkedIn lead gen form cost per lead is $164 for a content offer and $343 for a demo request.

So: never quote a blended number: the blend ($185) describes someone else's mix of offers.

The top quarter of LinkedIn advertisers pay under $67 for a content lead and under $131 for a demo lead; the top tenth under $28 and $67.

So: that is what "good" means; above $365 / $741 is the bottom quarter.

What the form asks for sets the price: a template lead costs $110, an ebook $135, a webinar $135, a report $199, a meeting $263, a free trial $283, an audit $295 and a demo $530, a 4.8× spread.

So: inside one account no flavour of content is cheaper than another; the type of ask is the lever.

Paired inside the same account, a demo request costs +51% more per lead than a content offer, dearer in 30 of 50 accounts.

So: the 2.1× gap across the market shrinks to +51% for one advertiser switching offers.

LinkedIn message ads are the cheapest lead on the platform: $56 per content lead and $175 per demo lead.

So: the inbox is the demo format.

A single image ad with a demo form costs $600 per lead, converts 2.1% of form opens and needs 48 form opens per lead.

So: the most common LinkedIn setup is the worst one.

LinkedIn cost per lead by industry runs from $20 (higher education, content) to $722 (hospitals, demo) across 107 industries; software is $81 content / $459 demo, IT services $83 content, financial services $85 / $224.

So: the same industry is 5× apart on offer type alone.

A LinkedIn content lead costs $68 in the UK, $210 in the US and $9 in LATAM; a demo lead $299 in the UK and $376 in the US.

So: within the same account US vs Europe is +12% and not significant: geography describes the market, not the auction.

Accounts spending under $1,000 a month on LinkedIn lead gen pay $98 per content lead; accounts spending $25,000+ pay $401.

So: the size effect is mix (US, demo, lists, small pools), not the auction; "you cannot do lead gen under £3k a month" is wrong for content.

A landing page lead costs $721 in the same accounts that pay $185 for a lead gen form lead; landing pages convert 1.6% of clicks.

So: use the form unless the offer is a meeting.

A demo form converts at 2% in the LinkedIn feed and 40% in a message ad.

So: put the demo ask in the inbox, or behind a content offer.

Median LinkedIn lead gen form completion (submits ÷ opens) in the feed is 7.6%: 10.8% for content offers, 2.2% for demo requests; in a message or conversation ad, 40.7%.

So: good is 18.7% (content) and 4.2% (demo); exceptional 31.6% and 9.5%.

Form completion rate explains half of the difference in cost per lead between LinkedIn accounts; CPM explains a third and click rate a fifth.

So: judge a lead gen campaign on completion before CTR or CPM.

The median LinkedIn lead gen form open rate in the feed is 0.33% of impressions: 0.39% on single image, 0.14% on document ads, 0.45% on video.

So: open rates barely vary by format; completion runs 1.2% to 20.3%, a 17× range.

A LinkedIn document ad needs 5 form opens per lead; a single image content form 12; a single image demo form 48; a video demo form 80.

So: the click-to-submit gap is the format's real cost.

Adding a phone number field to a LinkedIn lead gen form cuts completion by 66% and raises cost per lead 135% in the same account.

So: phone only when sales will dial it.

Field count does not move LinkedIn form completion in a measurable way: 3 or fewer fields 9.0%, 8+ fields 4.0% cross-panel, +16% paired and not significant.

So: the median form has 6 fields; 71% require a work email, 35% ask for a phone number, 81% have no custom question.

LinkedIn lead gen forms run 55% lower cost per lead than landing pages in the same account, and 82% lower on content offers.

So: on demo requests the two are a tie.

LinkedIn document ads run 22% lower cost per lead than single image on content offers: fewer form opens, 174% higher completion (20.3% vs 8.3%).

So: documents for content, never for demo.

36% of LinkedIn lead gen form spend runs in the inbox: 27% on conversation ads, 9% on message ads.

So: the "conversation ads are dead" line is wrong on the objective where they matter most.

26% of LinkedIn lead gen campaign-months with $200 or more of spend deliver zero leads, $1.68M in total.

So: the floor is real.

At $10 to $25 a day, a LinkedIn content offer gets its first lead in 3 days; a demo offer takes 12 days, and 36% of demo campaigns never get one.

So: set expectations by offer, not by budget.

Even at $100 to $250 a day, only 46% of LinkedIn demo campaign-months get a lead a week; below $50 a day it is under one in five.

So: below $100 a day the honest forecast for demo is "probably nothing this month".

A single image ad with a demo form has zero leads in 66% of months under $10 a day and still 19% at $100 or more; a document with a content offer reaches 0% at $100 a day.

So: the zero-lead month is a format-and-offer problem before it is a budget problem.

28% of LinkedIn lead gen campaigns never produce a lead; half deliver for 29 days or less and a third for 14 days or less.

So: most of the platform's lead gen is short tests.

Only 4% of LinkedIn lead gen campaigns were switched off before the median time to first lead for their offer and budget.

So: campaigns do not die of impatience; they wait past the median and still get nothing.

LinkedIn lead gen form cost per lead rises 37% by month three while completion falls 22% and CPM falls 9%.

So: the fatigue is inside the form; refresh on completion at week four, because CPM never warns you.

Uploaded lists fatigue a month faster than cold on LinkedIn lead gen forms (cost per lead index 146 by month three vs 130), and retargeting fatigues worst (173 by month five).

So: refresh any list under 10,000 monthly.

The median LinkedIn lead gen advertiser gets 22 leads a year from forms and spends $5,043 on the objective; 134 accounts get 100 or more.

So: most advertisers are running small tests, which is the context for every benchmark.

The cheapest 10% of LinkedIn lead gen accounts got 537 leads on $8,021; the dearest 10% got 23 leads on $43,927.

So: the cheap decile runs cold, on big audiences, for content, on documents; the dear decile runs demo forms to small US lists in single image ads.

Uploaded lists are 42% of LinkedIn lead gen form spend and run 31% higher cost per lead than cold targeting in the same account.

So: a list pays 19% more per impression and gets 24% fewer leads per impression; cold before lists.

Retargeting does not lower cost per lead on LinkedIn lead gen forms: −9% vs cold, cheaper in 34 of 65 accounts, a tie.

So: use retargeting for the offer sequence, not the price.

Audience size does not move LinkedIn lead gen cost per lead or completion: rank correlation −0.03 across accounts, −0.13 within them; from 7,000 to 960,000 people completion sits at 10 to 14%.

So: the 50,000-minimum rule is dead for forms.

Targeting director and above on LinkedIn costs nothing extra: +17% vs including managers and not significant, and 94% of leads on filtered campaigns come from inside the filter.

So: a seniority filter is a quality decision, not a cost lever.

Inside the same LinkedIn campaign, a C-suite lead costs about a third less than the campaign average and a VP lead 41% less; entry-level leads pull the average up.

So: the senior leads are the cheap ones.

Director and above are 26% of LinkedIn lead gen impressions and 40% of leads; entry level is 33% of impressions and 19% of leads.

So: the "junk leads" line dies on seniority.

CXOs convert at 5.2 leads per 10,000 LinkedIn impressions against 1.7 for entry level; marketing converts at 9.5, HR 7.0, engineering 2.4.

So: the people who submit are more senior than the people who see the ad.

Content forms pull enterprise on LinkedIn (companies of 10,000+ are 28% of impressions and 44% of leads); demo forms pull micro-companies (2 to 10 people are 26% of impressions and 36% of leads).

So: who converts depends on what you ask for.

Enterprise-only targeting looks 2.7× dearer than SMB-only on LinkedIn demo leads ($647 vs $242), but paired inside one account it is −45% and not significant.

So: the table shows who targets enterprise, not what targeting enterprise costs.

Job-title targeting runs 38% lower cost per lead than function-plus-seniority targeting in the same account, despite paying 26% more per impression.

So: fewer, better titles beat broad functions.

LinkedIn ads that open with a question get 64% fewer leads per impression than ads that open with a statement.

So: state the offer in the first line.

Naming the reader's job title in the first line of a LinkedIn ad ("CMOs", "marketers") cuts leads per impression by 54%; saying "free" does nothing measurable.

So: address the problem, not the title.

Running 4 to 6 creatives per LinkedIn campaign instead of 2 to 3 has no effect on cost per lead: −8%, not significant, 25 of 47 accounts.

So: the four-or-five-creatives rule has no cost effect on the lead gen objective.

Enhanced conversion bidding vs maximum delivery on LinkedIn lead gen forms: cost per lead −18%, CPM −19%, both not significant.

So: bid strategy is not a lever on cost per lead.

Bidding higher on LinkedIn message ads costs 80% more per send and 44% more per lead for the same open rate; the median campaign pays 62% of its bid.

So: start at the minimum bid.

The highest-bid thought leader ad campaign in a LinkedIn account pays 128% more per engagement than the lowest and gets 32% less of it.

So: bid type (CPC vs CPM) makes no difference; bid amount does.

The top 10% of LinkedIn thought leader ad authors get 8.6× the engagement of the bottom 10%: 10.55% vs 1.22%; the author explains 67% of the variance.

So: pick the person before you worry about the post.

Doubling a LinkedIn campaign's daily spend costs 26% more per landing page click and returns 59% more clicks.

So: diminishing, not collapsing.

The LinkedIn lead generation objective pays 40% higher CPM than website visits, 81% more than brand awareness, and the same CPM as engagement, in the same account and month.

So: the form is not a free add-on.

Audience expansion on LinkedIn changes cost per lead by −6%, not significant, and CPM by −10%.

So: not waste, not a lever.

Across 944 LinkedIn advertiser accounts and every feed format on every objective except lead generation, the median CPM is $36.23, the median landing page CTR 0.23% and the median cost per landing page click $17.54; on the two traffic objectives alone it is 0.35% and $10.47.

So: the whole-panel base; formats and objectives spread widely around it, and the lead generation objective is excluded because its clicks open a form, not a page.

LinkedIn's default click field gives a median cost per click of $4.19; counted on landing page clicks, the same accounts pay $17.54, and by format the real click costs $13.63 on single image, $14.01 on carousel, $25.02 on a thought leader ad, $33.68 on video and $101 on a document ad.

So: published $2 to $5 CPCs are cost per total click and understate the price of a site visit by 3 to 10×.

91% of clicks on LinkedIn thought leader ads never reach a landing page: total CTR is 4.56%, landing page CTR 0.43%.

So: total CTR is engagement rate with a different name (r = 0.998).

The median LinkedIn thought leader ad account runs at 0.46% landing page CTR, $14.71 per landing page click, $65 CPM and 4.46% engagement; good is 0.67% / $8.37 / $36 / 6.44%.

So: the ladder every thought leader ad should be read against.

The cheapest landing page click on LinkedIn is single image sponsored content on the website visits objective: $11.33 across 493 accounts, at 0.44% landing page CTR.

So: if the click is the job, buy it there.

LinkedIn thought leader ads and company-page ads have identical landing page CTR (0.449% vs 0.441%); the thought leader ad premium is CPM, $74.71 vs $48.80.

So: you pay for the author in media cost, not in clicks.

Cold LinkedIn audiences under 10,000 people cost $73 CPM; over 300,000, $24; cost per landing page click falls from $35 to $14 across the same range.

So: widen the audience before raising the budget.

Above $2 a day per 1,000 audience members, LinkedIn CPM roughly doubles ($39.57 under $0.50 a day per 1,000 to $121.81 at $5 to $10) and lead gen form completion halves.

So: size the budget to the audience.

The same LinkedIn advertisers pay 30% more CPM in Q2 than in Q1 and 47% more per landing page click; March CPM runs 16% under the annual median.

So: the calendar moves CPM more than anything you do to the ad.

The cheapest 10 LinkedIn accounts pay $1.22 per landing page click and the dearest 10 pay $61.92; four settings separate them — audience size, budget pressure, bid, and share of spend on lists.

So: an account with none of the four boxes ticked pays $25.46; with all four, $6.42.

LinkedIn document ads have the highest engagement rate in the feed (5.8% median across 340 accounts) and the lowest landing page CTR (0.04%).

So: documents are read, not clicked; a content format.

LinkedIn video sponsored content costs $40.77 per landing page click against $18.97 for single image, on a lower CPM ($41 vs $50).

So: video is cheaper to show and dearer to get a click from.

LinkedIn carousel ads run at $14.86 per landing page click and 0.32% landing page CTR, the second-cheapest click in the feed after single image on website visits.

So: an underused traffic format.

LinkedIn thought leader ads engage at 4.7% at the median account across every objective; company-page single image ads engage at 1.2%.

So: four times the engagement, from a person's face instead of a logo.

Inside the same account and objective, LinkedIn thought leader ads cost 22% less per landing page click than company-page ads on engagement and 47% less on brand awareness, but sponsored content on website visits beats both by 52 to 59%.

So: buy thought leader ads to be read; buy the click on the traffic objective.

LinkedIn message-ad leads are 33% cheaper than single-image lead-form leads in the same account: 41% form completion against 5%.

So: feed posts open forms; messages complete them.

On demo requests, LinkedIn conversation ads are 49% cheaper per lead than single image in the same account and message ads 40% cheaper; on content offers, message ad vs single image is a tie.

So: the inbox wins on demo; documents win on content.

Video with a LinkedIn lead gen form costs 60% more per lead than single image in the same account, cheaper in only 4 of 16; a video demo form needs 80 form opens per lead.

So: the wrong format to carry a form.

LinkedIn video on the website visits objective is viewed by 39.8% of people who see it, but only 5.6% of views reach 75% and 3.9% complete; cost per view $0.11, cost per 75% view $2.01, cost per landing page click $11.66.

So: a view is two seconds; judge video on cost per 75% view and cost per click.

LinkedIn thought leader video ads are watched more than any other video setup (52.5% view rate on engagement) and clicked less ($53 per landing page click).

So: watch time and clicks are different products.

LinkedIn brand awareness reaches 77% more people per dollar than engagement on thought leader ads, at 39% lower CPM.

So: use it for reach on cold audiences of 30,000 or more; on anything smaller, or on any list, it just pays more per engagement.

A landing page click costs the same on LinkedIn brand awareness and engagement thought leader ads: $17.24 vs $17.22.

So: the click never decides the objective.

On a LinkedIn audience under 10,000, brand awareness costs $4.75 per engagement; over 100,000, $1.06.

So: audience size decides the objective.

LinkedIn campaigns report a frequency of 3.5; the account actually delivers 9.5 over 90 days, because campaigns share people and each counts them separately.

So: every frequency cap and fatigue alert should use the account number.

Engagement on a LinkedIn thought leader ad is down 9% once everyone in the audience has seen it once and 22% after five times, while CPM, cost per click and dwell stay flat for eight weeks.

So: fatigue is frequency, not time; cost per click warns a month late.

A LinkedIn audience under 10,000 sees a creative once in 14 days; an audience over 100,000 takes 53.

So: refresh creative by audience size, not the calendar.

The median LinkedIn thought leader ad reaches 20.5% of its target audience in 90 days; the top quarter passes 40% and only 11% pass 75%; 68% of that reach arrives in the first 30 days.

So: LinkedIn re-serves before it prospects.

Reaching half an audience on LinkedIn costs about $448 for 3,400 people, $3,544 for 27,000 and $15,832 for 260,000, at observed CPMs.

So: report reach as a share of audience, not impressions.

79% of LinkedIn thought leader ad spend sets no seniority filter, yet CXOs engage at 4.42% against 3.46% for senior individual contributors at the same cost per click.

So: always a seniority filter, usually director and above.

49% of LinkedIn thought leader ad spend goes to uploaded lists, which perform like cold audiences with an 11% CPM premium and cost 2.1× more per person reached; every paired interval spans zero.

So: a list is not a warm audience; only true retargeting is.

The median cost per lead from LinkedIn conversation and message ads is $200; $32 at the 10th percentile and $1,005 at the 90th, a 32× spread.

So: the format is whatever your settings make it.

The median LinkedIn message ad account opens at 42.6%, gets a lead from 0.09% of sends, completes the form 41% of the time and pays $0.42 a send.

So: good is 48.8% open / 0.22% lead rate / $0.23 a send; exceptional 53.9% / 0.52% / $0.11.

Open rate explains 2% of cost per lead on LinkedIn message ads; cost per send explains 55%, form opens per open 38%, form completion 13%.

So: leave the subject line alone; track cost per send.

Retargeting gets 71% more leads per send than cold on LinkedIn message ads, 18% more opens, and 36% lower cost per lead than an uploaded list.

So: build the retargeting pool first.

An uploaded list costs 21% more per send than cold targeting on LinkedIn message ads and delivers nothing extra.

So: run it as cold.

Inside the same account, LinkedIn conversation ads and message ads tie on cost per lead; conversation ads open 20% less and complete the form 21% more.

So: pick the format by whether the offer needs a qualification step.

Across every objective, LinkedIn message ads open at 49.6% and cost $0.33 a send; conversation ads open at 40.8% and cost $0.46.

So: one message, one button, more opens, cheaper sends.

Cost per send on LinkedIn sponsored messaging is $0.56 in the US, $0.49 in the UK, $0.31 in the rest of Europe, $0.25 in DACH and $0.21 in Benelux, with higher open rates in Europe (50 to 55%) than the US (40%).

So: the US inbox is the most contested on the platform.

Two thirds of LinkedIn conversation ad conversions without a form are booked meetings; median cost per booking $221, and retargeting pools book 55% of clicks at $145.

So: skip the form only when the offer is a meeting and the audience is warm; nobody books a demo cold.

Leads per send on LinkedIn message ads are flat across the week at 0.16 to 0.17% every day; opens hold at 109 to 115 against week one for eight weeks; no month moves cost per lead more than 8%.

So: run continuously; do not pause weekends.

The median LinkedIn CPM is $84 for campaigns targeting the US, $50 for the UK, $39 for DACH, $28 for Benelux, $17 for APAC and $14 for LATAM.

So: the US is the most contested auction on the platform.

On the LinkedIn lead generation objective, US-targeted campaigns pay $126 CPM against $55 in the UK and $51 in DACH.

So: the US pays for the form in the auction before it pays for the lead.

LinkedIn conversation ad cost per lead across the market is $351 in the US, $188 in the UK and $111 in the EU; cost per send $0.52, $0.63 and $0.23.

So: continental Europe is the cheapest inbox.

Sunday is the cheapest day for LinkedIn lead gen forms (cost per lead index 94); every weekday is 100 and lead rate is 100 every day; weekends are 20% of delivery.

So: there is no reason to pause weekends.

LinkedIn CPM peaks in December (index 116) and troughs in January (97) within account, and lead gen cost per lead sits between 98 and 103 all year.

So: turning lead gen off in December saves nothing per lead.

LinkedIn thought leader ads click through 9 to 10% better on weekends than weekdays and cost 1 to 4% less per impression.

So: weekends stay on.

30% of accounts running LinkedIn message ads got zero leads, spending $1.16M between them; a cold list, a high bid, a landing page and a small audience rounds to nothing.

So: the four mistakes compound.

The cheapest 10 LinkedIn accounts pay $13 per message ad lead; the dearest 10 pay $1,776, with the same form completion.

So: the 32× gap is what you pay to arrive and whether the message earns the click.

Twenty-four LinkedIn advertiser accounts are half of all lead gen form spend; the top 5% of accounts collect 53% of the leads.

So: this is why every Kiin Labs figure is a median across accounts, never a pooled total.

Among LinkedIn advertisers that run lead gen forms, the objective is 42% of their LinkedIn spend, and the median account puts half its budget there.

So: lead gen is where the money is, and where a blended benchmark does the most damage.