‘Clicks don’t pay the bills, pipeline quality does,’ becomes LinkedIn’s case for its pricey ad prices

To compare, the average annual CPM rate (as of Oct. 31, 2025) on Meta (Facebook and Instagram) is $5.46, TikTok is $4.66, YouTube is $5, Snapchat is $8.90 and Pinterest is $4.67, according to data from Gupta Media. But LinkedIn CPMs sit around $23.42, per Gupta Media.

“That perception persists that we are expensive,” said Oh. “But [he tells marketers’] come back to me when you have a cost per pipeline driven or identified, or a new prospect that’s been identified by marketing org, I will go head to head and say, we are phenomenally cheaper and we have tools for that.”

That stance leaves agencies doing the usual calculus, sorting out whether the platform’s promise of clearer, more qualified demand justified the premium clients are increasingly asked to swallow. 

“Typically, they’ll [advertisers] say the CPM is this, or the CPC is that. But that seems a little bit off when you’re thinking about trying to target someone on certain other social networks that starts with F[acebook] or I[nstagram], or P[interest] or R[eddit] and you’re targeting them,” said Oh. “You’ve got an amazing cost per click or impression. Your reach was amazing too. The thing is, in that pool of cheap clicks and impressions, sure that’s great, and you look at your CPM, but are you doing that conversion? Do you have any idea what the on target is for what you need to be productive?”

It can sound smug but the logic isn’t hard to follow. LinkedIn isn’t built – or used – like the rest of social media. Its audience arrives with job titles, budgets and buying authority and the company has priced its ads with that reality in mind. 

“LinkedIn may have over a billion users, but they’re not opening the app every half an hour like they might be with Meta or TikTok,” said Brave Bison’s director of paid media Mark Byrne. “Feed time is lower, ad inventory is more limited and supply is therefore tighter. The higher CPMs and CPCs reflect the nature of the environment.”

Whether enough other marketers agree, remains to be seen. When Digiday caught up with Basis Technologies’ client strategy and insights partner Colleen Fielder back in February, she explained that since LinkedIn’s targeting could be quite expensive, especially for niche segments, it hadn’t been the right fit for the team’s clients campaigns.

And that position still stands today. “LinkedIn’s strength lies in reaching professionals based on precise job profiles,” explained Jess Kaswiner, Basis’ senior social media investment director. “That’s why widening targeting to broad audiences doesn’t make sense—if the goal is scale without specificity, lower-cost platforms are better suited (i.e. leveraging broad-based targeting of Meta’s Advantage+ or TikTok’s Smart+).”

But those concerts were easier to shrug off when LinkedIn kept its focus on B2B advertisers. The calculus shifts now that the platform is courting B2C budgets too. 

Ellis Digital’s managing director Sebastian Ellis noted that while his team does a lot of work for B2B as well as B2C, they still don’t really consider LinkedIn that often for B2C clients.

“It is a more expensive platform,” he said. “On a good campaign at the moment on Facebook, we’re getting 20p ($0.26) to 40p ($0.53) per click, whereas LinkedIn is about £1.50 ($1.98) to £2 ($2.63) per click,” he said. “But I believe you get what you pay for, depending on what you’re trying to achieve. You’re going to get a certain calibre of individual on LinkedIn, so that’s probably why you pay more for it.”

The idea that LinkedIn is expensive is a view shared by Collective Measures’ associate director of performance media, Neil Robinson. He said he believes LinkedIn definitely charges a more premium CPC, but he did also note it’s worth it for certain advertisers who are trying to reach a specific audience.

“LinkedIn is a more expensive channel to advertise on, but if you are advertising in a space such as higher education, B2B, or SaaS, then the extremely detailed targeting capabilities that LinkedIn has to offer are worth the cost – because what is the next best option?” he said.

LinkedIn’s ad revenue is forecast to reach around $8.2 billion this year, according to WARC Media Platform Insights report. That figure is expected to increase to around $9.7 billion in 2026, and again to $11.3 billion in 2027. And it appears that generative AI companies are a driving force behind those numbers, according to WARC, as they allocate around 12% of their total digital ad budgets to LinkedIn.

When comparing the size of its ad business with other platforms, WARC Media’s latest global ad spend forecast revealed that LinkedIn’s ad business is already bigger than some of its tier two platform peers, including Snapchat ($6 billion), Pinterest ($4.2 billion) and Reddit ($2.2 billion).