B2B advertising benchmarks by platform
B2B paid social benchmarks by platform: cost per lead, cost per click, CPM, click-through and click-to-lead rates from 153 advertisers and $57.6M of spend.
B2B demand generation is priced in a different currency from ecommerce. A LinkedIn click costs $9.39 against $1.95 on Meta, and a thousand LinkedIn impressions costs $63.19 against $15.50 — but LinkedIn turns 5.9% of those clicks into leads where Meta turns 2.6%.
That trade is the whole planning question, and cost per lead is where it settles: $202 on LinkedIn, $145 on Meta, $138 on Instagram. Prospecting against retargeting moves it further — Meta's retargeting leads cost $120 against $166 prospecting, while LinkedIn's move the other way.
These are spend-weighted figures across 153 advertisers, so large programmes pull the averages. There is no industry breakout in the published tables; the platform split is the only cut available.
B2B paid social by platform
Who is in this sample: 153 B2B advertisers, $57.6M spend, 211,000 leads; spend-weighted
| Industry | CTR | CPC | CPM | CVR | CPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook / Meta | 0.79% | $1.95 | $15.50 | 2.6% | $145.00 |
| 0.65% | $2.82 | $18.25 | 4% | $138.00 | |
| 0.67% | $9.39 | $63.19 | 5.9% | $202.00 |
Industry names are reproduced in the publisher's own wording.
Source
- Publisher
- Metadata.io
- Data period
- Calendar 2025
- Sample
- 153 B2B advertisers, $57.6M spend, 211,000 leads
- Geography
- Not stated
- Statistic
- Figures are averages
Notes on this table
- B2B demand generation only; figures are spend-weighted.
- Platform-level — the published tables carry no industry breakout.
- Conversion rate here is click-to-lead, and cost per acquisition is cost per lead.
- The publisher also reports Meta cost per lead of $166 prospecting against $120 retargeting, and LinkedIn $194 against $234.
How to use these numbers
A benchmark is a description of someone else's sample, not a target. The number worth hitting is your own break-even: the cost per acquisition your margin allows, or the return on ad spend that leaves a profit after the product is paid for. Use the calculators to work that out first, then use the benchmark to ask whether the market is even priced for it.
When your number sits far from the table, check the sample before checking your account. A store compared with a lead-generation sample, or a brand-heavy account compared with broad prospecting, will look broken while being perfectly healthy. The universe line above each table is there for exactly that check.
Calculators for these metrics
Frequently asked questions
- Is LinkedIn worth four times the CPM?
- It depends on what a qualified lead is worth to you and how tightly the audience can be defined elsewhere. The figures show LinkedIn converting clicks to leads at more than twice Meta's rate, which narrows but does not close a gap of nearly five times in cost per click ($9.39 against $1.95).
- Which LinkedIn ad format is cheapest per lead?
- In this sample, document ads at $142, then image at $200, video at $265 and conversation ads at $362.
- Why is there no industry breakdown?
- The publisher does not print one in the public tables. Rather than borrow industry cuts from an unrelated report, the page shows only what the source actually publishes.
How this data is handled
- Every figure is transcribed from a public report and carries its publisher, sample, data period and a link. Nothing is estimated or rounded to “about”.
- Publishers are never blended. A click-through rate from one report and a CPM from another never appear in the same row.
- Each table states who is in its sample, because advertiser mix — not disagreement — explains most of the spread between reports.
- Publisher errors and dated datasets are footnoted rather than quietly corrected or refreshed from another source.