--- title: "2026 B2B Paid Media Benchmark Report" url: https://metadata.io/benchmark-report-2026 description: "Eight findings from 153 B2B advertisers and $57.6M of 2025 ad spend: pipeline per dollar, cost per lead by channel, cost per customer by company size. No email gate." source: metadata.io --- # What $57.6M of B2B ad spend says you should do differently. 153 advertisers · $57.6M · 211,000 leads · 2025 · no email gate. Eight findings, one chart each, six minutes to read. ## Eight findings from $57.6M of B2B ad spend Each one is a number, the chart behind it, and the move it supports. Click through for the proof. ### Every $1 of lead-gen ad spend sourced $7.97 of pipeline in 2025. **Do this:** Report pipeline per dollar to the board, beside cost per lead. ### LinkedIn turned $1 of lead-gen spend into $10.20 of pipeline. **Do this:** Fund LinkedIn lead-gen first. ### A LinkedIn lead cost $202. Instagram $138, Facebook $145, Google Ads $524. **Do this:** Benchmark your LinkedIn lead against $376, the middle of the market. ### Where $57.6M of B2B ad spend went: 37% cold prospecting, 20% retargeting, 21% other lead-gen audiences, 22% traffic and awareness. **Do this:** Write your own four shares next to these before the planning meeting. ### LinkedIn lead forms cost $193 a lead. Landing pages cost $346. **Do this:** Make the in-feed form the default on every LinkedIn lead campaign. ### LinkedIn document ads made a lead for $142. Image ads $200, video $265. **Do this:** Rebuild your best gated asset as a document ad this week. ### Retargeting sourced 9.6x of pipeline per $1 at $196 a lead. Cold prospecting cost $187. **Do this:** Fund retargeting on pipeline per dollar, not on cost per lead. ### On LinkedIn a small-company customer cost $31k. Mid-market $103k. Enterprise $78k. **Do this:** Set a cost-per-customer target per company size. One blended number hides a 3x gap. ## Take it with you No forms, no gate. Forward it to whoever owns the budget. ### For the CMO The eight findings as a deck, one page each, with the question to ask your team on every page. ### For demand generation The same eight findings, with the move to make on each one and how to test it. ### The data Every published cut as a spreadsheet: company size, industry, channel, ad type, goal, offer and audience. ## How we counted 153 B2B advertisers ran $57.6M of paid media through Metadata in 2025 across LinkedIn, Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram. Cost per lead, cost per click and click-through come from all of them. Pipeline and cost per customer come from the 90 advertisers whose CRM is connected. Sourced pipeline is the value of opportunities the CRM credits to an ad-generated lead. Influenced revenue is closed-won deals an ad touched on the way. No segment is published on fewer than five advertisers, and no advertiser is allowed to be the majority of a published number. [The full method](https://metadata.io/benchmark/methodology) is two pages. ## Want your numbers next to these? Metadata runs paid campaigns for 150+ B2B companies. Bring your spend and your CRM and we show you where your cost per lead, cost per customer and pipeline per dollar sit against this benchmark.