150 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.

The median demo request on LinkedIn costs $350; a quarter of accounts pay under $161 and a quarter pay over $754.

So: the spread between accounts is 5x; which quarter you are in matters more than the average.

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.

LinkedIn accounts with cheap, high-volume demo leads spend the same per month as the ones paying six times more per lead: $2,168 vs $2,058.

So: budget is not what separates them; placement, pool size and audience size are.

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 and $210 in the US; 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 the inbox, message and conversation ads together.

So: message ads alone run 31 to 32%; 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 CTR 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.

A phone number field costs LinkedIn form completions: Report No. 3 found 66% fewer in the same account; a re-check on a fresher year of data finds about a third fewer (−31% to −38%), with cost per lead about flat.

So: phone only when sales will dial it; the direction holds, the size is smaller than first reported.

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, about 2.5× the completion (20.3% vs 8.3%).

So: documents for content, never for demo. A fresher re-check gives −19% in 82 accounts.

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; Report No. 3 found them 31% dearer per content lead than cold in the same account, but across 95 accounts and every Kiin study the gap is about 15% and not significant.

So: a list is an account choice, not a cheaper audience; run cold alongside it.

Across accounts, cold LinkedIn demo leads look cheaper than retargeting ($210 vs $467), but that is who runs which: in the same account a cold demo lead costs about 40% more than a retargeted one.

So: retargeting converts, then runs out: the median demo retargeting pool is 4,600 people. Rotate it.

For LinkedIn demo campaigns the audience-size rule flips by placement: in the feed a cold audience of 250,000+ gets a lead for $76 to $87 and under 30,000 for $232; in the inbox under 10,000 gets a lead for $173 and over 170,000 for $635.

So: feed goes broad, inbox goes tight.

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.

In the same account, a LinkedIn audience under 30,000 people pays 32% more per landing page click than a broad one, all of it through CPM (+32%); CTR does not move.

So: a small audience costs more because the auction is tighter, not because the ad is worse.

Job-title targeting leans 38% lower cost per lead than function-plus-seniority targeting in the same account, but the interval spans zero (−49% to +1%), so it is directional; it pays 26% more per impression.

So: fewer, better titles lean ahead of broad functions; test it in your account.

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.

"Request a demo" costs $566 a lead at the median LinkedIn account; book a call $342. The gap is in the inbox ($431 vs $327); the audit and free-trial prices were withdrawn.

So: in the inbox, test asking for a call; in the feed, change the placement, not the words.

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.

Letting LinkedIn's max delivery set the bid costs more per demo lead: in the same account, manual CPM is 50% cheaper in the inbox and enhanced conversion is 38% cheaper than max delivery in the feed.

So: set the price yourself in the inbox; bid for leads in the feed.

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. Report No. 5 prices every campaign in the full panel format by format instead of pooling them: single image alone runs a $49.98 median CPM, $13.54 per landing page click and $91.30 CPM on US-only campaigns.

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.

Single image is the cheapest website click in the LinkedIn feed: $12.48 at the median advertiser against $16.86 for thought leader ads.

So: the gap is the objective: on the same engagement objective the two cost the same per click (−3%, not significant). Buy clicks with single image on website visits.

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, the LinkedIn landing page click roughly doubles in price (CPM runs from $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 a 0.04% landing page CTR, the lowest in the feed; their 5.8% engagement rate is mostly page flips, and social actions per impression run 24 to 26% below single image.

So: documents are a content and lead gen format, not a traffic or engagement one.

Video is the cheapest reach on LinkedIn: in the same account its CPM runs 13% below single image, at about $0.11 a view.

So: build retargeting pools with video; buy the click with single image.

81% of LinkedIn carousel clicks reach the website, against 44% for single image, 21% for video, 10% for thought leader ads and 2% for documents.

So: judge carousels on cost per website click, where they tie single image in the same account (+10%, not significant).

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.

Buy the LinkedIn click on the traffic objective: sponsored content on website visits costs 52 to 59% less per landing page click than thought leader ads on engagement or brand awareness, in the same account.

So: on the same objective, thought leader and company-page ads cost about the same per click; the objective is the lever, not the author.

Message ads are the cheapest LinkedIn lead of any format: $115 at the median advertiser across all offers, and 51% less than single image in the same account.

So: feed posts open forms; messages complete them (41% of openers submit in the inbox, about 9% in the feed).

Putting a demo ask in the inbox instead of the feed cuts LinkedIn cost per demo lead by 57% in the same account: the form completes 42% of the time against 3.9%.

So: the demo ask belongs in a conversation ad.

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.

LinkedIn conversation ads with three buttons get 2.3× the CTR of two-button ads (2.32% vs 1.00%) but a third of the leads per open (0.07% vs 0.23%).

So: every extra button is a way out; one yes and one no.

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.

Letting LinkedIn bid for you with maximum delivery costs 103% more per website click than a manual CPC bid in the same account, and 37% more per 1,000 impressions, with no change in CTR.

So: maximum delivery was cheaper in only 23 of 102 accounts; the premium is all price.

LinkedIn's suggested bid is 1.87× what manual campaigns actually pay, and 2 in 3 campaigns pay below the bottom of the suggested range.

So: on thought leader ads the gap is 2.15×; only in the inbox is the suggestion about right (1.01×).

Doubling a LinkedIn campaign's budget at the same bid buys 37% more impressions a day for an 11% higher price.

So: budget is the volume lever; a 70% higher bid buys 30 to 65% higher prices and 0 to 18% more delivery.

A LinkedIn campaign normally pays 73 to 88% of its bid; once it pays more than 85%, budget fill drops from 97% to 75%.

So: price paid ÷ bid is the signal that says raise the bid; below 85%, a raise only raises the price.

Maximum delivery gets dearer the longer it runs: thought leader ads pay 35% more by week 20 and 57% more by week 26; message and conversation ads pay 69% more per send by week 26.

So: an automated bid is a launch tool, not a set-and-forget one.

On LinkedIn audiences under 30,000 people, maximum delivery pays 171% more per landing page click and 201% more per 1,000 impressions than manual bidding in the same account.

So: small audiences and automated bids are the dearest combination on the platform.

71% of LinkedIn campaigns that spend under 30% of budget in their first three days are still under it in weeks three and four; only 3% of near-zero starts recover.

So: fix the bid or the audience in week one; waiting does not fill the budget.

LinkedIn cost swings 39% from day to day on single image, and the median lead gen campaign gets 0.08 leads a day, about 360 days to 30 leads.

So: change bids weekly by 10 to 15%, never daily on one day's numbers.

LinkedIn conversation ads bid under $0.30 a send get leads at a median $65 and open at 46%; bids of $0.80 or more pay $421 a lead and open at 39.5%.

So: the high bid buys nothing (stat 045: +80% per send, same open rate); start low.

Each doubling of an advertiser's monthly LinkedIn lead gen spend raises cost per lead by about 13%; doubling in a single step costs a median 37% more per lead.

So: scale in steps, not jumps.

LinkedIn CTR falls 3 to 4% every time exposure doubles, from the very first views, with no breakpoint where fatigue suddenly sets in.

So: there is no safe frequency; refresh by passes of the audience, not by dates.

One full pass of the audience costs a LinkedIn ad about 10% of its CTR.

So: count passes (impressions ÷ audience size), not weeks.

After four passes of the audience, 1 in 3 LinkedIn ads have lost a fifth or more of their starting CTR; documents hold up best (85% still healthy) and thought leader ads worst (57%).

So: single image sits between, at 77%; refresh thought leader ads first.

Manual CPC bidding hides LinkedIn fatigue: cost per click stays flat while CPM falls. On CPM billing the same fatigue shows up as 21% dearer clicks at 2 to 4 passes and 41% at 8 or more.

So: on CPC bids watch CTR and delivery, not cost per click.

LinkedIn engagement rate drops 13 to 17% by the second to fourth audience pass across formats, and 24% on video.

So: video tires fastest on engagement.

A gated LinkedIn document's leads per impression, indexed to its first fortnight, fall to 75 by week four and 64 by week six; cost per lead is about 35% higher by week six.

So: refresh at weeks 3 to 4 under 50,000 people, weeks 5 to 6 at 50,000 to 200,000, week 8 above that.

Message and conversation ad cost per lead rises about 35% by weeks 8 to 11 of a LinkedIn campaign, and pausing does not reset it.

So: a paused campaign comes back to the same tired audience; new audience or new message.

Heavy delivery days, when a LinkedIn campaign spends 3× its normal daily amount, cost 66% more per landing page click and 56% more per 1,000 impressions.

So: a budget spike buys the dearest inventory of the week.

Doubling a LinkedIn demo budget per person in the audience brings about 52% more demos at 31% more per demo, a smooth curve with no cliff from $1 to $1,000 per 1,000 people a month.

So: there is no capture ceiling; each doubling is worth it while the extra demo is worth more than it costs.

87% of a typical LinkedIn account's impressions are served on mobile.

So: design the creative for a phone first.

Half of LinkedIn advertisers ran thought leader ads in September 2026, up from 39% in January; they take 21% of spend.

So: the most adopted new format on the platform this year.

Since January 2026, thought leader ads cost 31% more per website click and 38% more per 1,000 impressions in the same accounts; single image stayed flat.

So: re-check thought leader ad costs against single image every quarter.

In the same account, LinkedIn thought leader ads get engagement 52% cheaper than single image and 3.6× the CTR.

So: but 90% of those clicks stay on LinkedIn (stat 063); thought leader ads are for distribution.

Thought leader video went from 15% to 34% of LinkedIn video spend between January and September 2026.

So: video is moving from the company page to people.

Thought leader video gets a 49% view rate against 39% for company-page video; same advertiser and objective, it is +9%.

So: the author wins the first two seconds.

Thought leader video engages at 3.0% against 1.0% for company-page video, and in the same account and objective an engagement costs 27% less.

So: for engagement and views, put the video on a person.

Company-page video runs at a 20% lower CPM than static thought leader ads in the same account ($41 vs $57 median), and it is the video format that can carry a lead gen form.

So: company video had a $180 median cost per lead; thought leader video produced almost no leads all year.

Carousels are 1.6% of LinkedIn ad spend, run by 14% of advertisers; the median carousel user gives them 3.4% of budget.

So: a niche format, and flat at 1.3 to 1.8% of spend every quarter.

On lead gen, LinkedIn carousels cost about 60% more per lead than single image in the same account, cheaper in only 4 of 15.

So: carousels for clicks, single image or documents for forms.

The best quarter of LinkedIn carousels pay $4.27 per website click and the worst $25.48, a 6× gap that is mostly CPM ($18 vs $93), not creative.

So: objective, audience type and country set the price; copy features showed no effect inside a campaign.

1 in 3 LinkedIn advertisers promoted an event in the last year, but events took only 4.6% of spend; 74% of that went to webinars.

So: events are a common side job for LinkedIn budgets, not a main one.

LinkedIn event ads cost 39% more per page click than the same advertiser's other single image ads, and 49% fewer of their clicks reach a page.

So: only 28% of event ad clicks reach the registration page, against 63% for a single image ad pushing an event.

Against a single image ad promoting an event, a LinkedIn event ad costs 11% more per page click, and the difference is not significant.

So: event ads are not a cheaper way to fill an event.

Promoting an in-person event on LinkedIn costs 46% more per page click than promoting a webinar, in the same account.

So: budget more for the room than for the stream.

Event registrations through a LinkedIn lead gen form cost the same as other form leads: −3%, not significant ($166 vs $186 median).

So: a registration is not a demo; never blend the two in one cost per lead.

A landing page has to convert 4.6% of LinkedIn clicks to match a lead gen form on cost per registration; tracked webinar pages convert 2.3%.

So: for webinars, the form wins unless your page converts twice as well as most.

A webinar registration costs $410 through a LinkedIn feed lead gen form and $809 through a tracked landing page.

So: fewer than 1 in 10 advertisers spending on webinar pages recorded a single tracked registration.

1 in 15 LinkedIn advertisers pay people to take a demo, and 46% of advertisers running demo offers in the inbox use a gift, 71% of inbox demo spend.

So: the typical gift is $100.

In the same account, a gift card doubles LinkedIn demo leads per message open (+93%) while open rate dips 8%; once the gift's cost is added, cost per demo is about even.

So: a gift buys volume, not cheaper demos.

Cold audiences open a LinkedIn demo message almost as often as retargeted ones (−8%) but say yes 41% less often.

So: strangers drop out at the ask, which is where a gift helps.

31% of LinkedIn advertisers have Audience Network switched on in at least one spending campaign; 1 in 10 have a quarter or more of spend in campaigns with it on.

So: Audience Network sends B2B budgets off LinkedIn; switch it off.

The median LinkedIn advertiser sends 6% of spend to entry-level, training or unpaid members; the top quarter 15% or more.

So: 36% of advertisers send 10% or more there; most B2B buyers are not entry level.

The median LinkedIn advertiser spends 8% of budget reaching companies with 10 or fewer staff, and 18% on companies of 50 or fewer.

So: overlaps with the previous stat; never add the two.

About 37% of the median advertiser's LinkedIn spend reaches job functions outside its ideal customer profile, even leaving out IT, engineering, operations and product.

So: business development is the biggest off-profile function; check it first.

About 40% of the median advertiser's LinkedIn spend reaches industries outside its ideal customer profile.

So: the middle half runs 29% to 53%; check delivery by industry, not just targeting.

The median LinkedIn advertiser already puts 72% of spend into demand generation; 28% run no capture campaigns at all.

So: "do more demand gen" is advice most accounts already follow.

In the same account, more LinkedIn demand gen spend does not measurably lower the cost of leads captured later: −1% per doubling, not significant.

So: judge demand gen on influenced pipeline, not on platform cost per lead.

88% of people who open a LinkedIn lead gen form in the feed close it without submitting.

So: the form is where feed leads are lost; completion is the number to fix.

In the same account, a LinkedIn demo form gets opened 34% more than a content form and completed 84% less, so a demo lead costs 3.8× a content lead.

So: the ask, not the creative, sets the price of a lead.

LinkedIn CTV runs at a $25.76 median CPM against $96.43 in the feed for the same advertisers, 73% cheaper.

So: the cheapest impression LinkedIn sells; judge it on reach, not clicks.