LinkedIn Ads benchmarks for IT and engineering audiences 2026: what it costs to reach IT, from 273 accounts and $5.5M

This is the second of seven audience cuts of Kiin Labs' LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks 2026: what advertisers pay when the campaign's targeting includes the Information Technology or Engineering job function. It is the biggest cut in the series because IT is the most-targeted function on the platform, and the one where the gap between the cheap quarter and the dear quarter is widest. Every number is the median advertiser account, not a pooled total; ranges are the 25th to 75th percentile, so half of accounts sit inside them; pounds are at $1 = £0.79. The whole-panel comparison is LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks 2026 and the series hub is benchmarks by audience.

The expected case, with ranges

Feed formats (single image, video, carousel, document, event), every objective except lead generation, median account. 227 accounts.

Against the whole 944-account panel (CPM $36.23, landing page CTR 0.23%, cost per landing page click $17.54), IT costs 7% more per impression and 13% more per visit, with a click rate slightly above average. The middle half of accounts spans $10 to $42 per landing page click: the same audience, a fourfold difference, and the difference is the market (US or not), the seniority filter, the format and the bid.

By ad format

Campaign medians for formats with at least seven accounts.

Thought leader ads are reported in the dedicated study, not by audience; message and conversation ads count sends rather than impressions and are in the conversation ads study.

Lead gen forms: completion and cost per lead

437 lead-generation-objective campaigns, 116 accounts, $1,164,793, 5,726 leads; 15 accounts got no lead at all.

IT is the dearest lead in the series. A 5.7% completion rate at the median (2.4% to 13.0%) and $337 a lead reflect a mix heavy in demo and trial asks to an audience that does not fill in forms in the feed. The document ad more than doubles completion (12.5%) and cuts the lead to $248; the single-image form is $450 at 3.2%. In the lead gen forms study, an IT-function content lead cost $190 and a demo lead $495 at the median, so this cut sits between the two. The full guide is LinkedIn lead gen forms: specs, setup, conversion rates and CPL.

By seniority targeted

The director-and-above filter costs 26% more per impression than the manager-and-above filter and buys a slightly lower landing page CTR, so the click is 37% dearer; on the form side it completes better (7.4% against 5.0%) and the lead is cheaper ($276 against $333), which is the pattern of a demo ask reaching the person who can say yes. Manager-and-above is the cheapest click ($16.67) because senior ICs and managers in IT research and shortlist; leave it open for content and retargeting, filter up for the demo.

By company size targeted

Mid-market IT (201 to 5,000 employees) is the cheapest click in the cut at $11.84 and the highest landing page CTR at 0.30%, with the lowest CPM ($31.32). Enterprise-only IT costs a similar impression but nearly twice the lead ($612 against $340 for SMB). No company size filter is the dearest click ($22.17), because LinkedIn fills the audience with one-to-ten-person consultancies.

UK and US

The US is 53% dearer per impression and 55% dearer per visit than the UK for IT audiences, and the cost per lead is similar in both ($567 and $625). Landing page CTR is the same in both markets (0.28%), so the US premium is auction pressure, not audience quality: more vendors bidding on the same CIOs. The UK cost page in pounds is here; the global cost page is how much do LinkedIn ads cost.

Who actually sees the ads

LinkedIn's demographic report shows where the impressions went, whatever the targeting said. Pooled across the cut's campaigns, with the within-campaign index (100 = that campaign's average) for the cost and click rate of each segment:

Two thirds of IT impressions land on directors and VPs, who click at half the rate of senior ICs and managers. CXO impressions cost 10% more than the campaign average and owner impressions 20% more. On company size, IT campaigns skew enterprise: 10,001-plus employees is the biggest slice by far, at a $45 CPM and a healthy 0.24% landing page CTR, while the 201-to-5,000 bands cost $65 to $73 per thousand on the delivered side. Impressions to one-to-ten-person companies cost 9 to 17% above the campaign average and click through at a quarter of the rate; exclude them.

Audience size and frequency

The median campaign in this cut runs to 43,000 members (middle half 11,000 to 180,000). Within a campaign, as cumulative impressions pass through the audience:

IT audiences fatigue slowly: after one full pass click rate is down 5%, after two to three passes 8%, and after five passes 12%, with CPM easing 4 to 8%. The median campaign runs to 43,000 members, which at IT's daily budgets is passed several times a quarter, so refresh creative every three to four weeks rather than waiting for the numbers to turn. The reasoning is in LinkedIn ad frequency and fatigue.

How Kiin targets IT and engineering

• Titles for the demo, function plus seniority for everything else. A wide audience (IT or engineering function, manager and above, one country, 201 to 5,000 employees: 60,000 to 150,000 members) for content and retargeting pools, and a titles audience (CIO, CTO, VP Engineering, Head of IT, Head of Infrastructure, Director of Security, IT Manager) of 15,000 to 40,000 for the ask.
• Exclude the sellers. IT services and consulting, software vendors, staffing agencies, and one-to-ten-person companies. IT is the function where the audience is most polluted by people selling to it.
• Document ads for the content offer (12.5% completion in this cut against 3.2% on single image), with the technical asset itself as the document: architecture guides, benchmark reports, comparison matrices. Engineers open documents and ignore forms.
• Demo asks in the inbox, never a trial form in the feed. IT's feed completion is the lowest in the series; the message ad's 40% completion is the fix.
• Budget for the US separately. $66 CPM against $43 in the UK means a US IT campaign needs 50% more media for the same reach; plan it, do not discover it.
• Read the demographics report at two weeks and cut the functions that click and never convert (in IT campaigns: sales and business development at vendors), then export engaged companies from the Companies tab into outbound.

Who this is for

Anyone selling to IT, engineering or security teams: infrastructure and cloud, cybersecurity, developer tools, observability, data platforms, IT service management, device and endpoint management, managed service providers, and the consultancies and systems integrators that sell into the same desk. If your buyer is the CFO for an IT product, use the finance cut as well and target both.

Method and citation

Campaigns whose job-function targeting includes Information Technology or Engineering, with delivery between 8 September 2025 and 7 September 2026, at least $50 of spend and 2,000 impressions, LinkedIn Audience Network campaigns excluded, 14 currencies converted to USD at September 2026 rates: 2,006 campaigns, 273 advertiser accounts, $5,545,156. Feed metrics are the median advertiser account across single image, video, carousel, document and event formats on every objective except lead generation; lead gen form metrics are the median account on the lead generation objective. No cell with fewer than seven accounts is shown. Benchmark tables say what advertisers who target this audience pay, not what targeting it does to your cost; where a within-campaign index is shown, it is the segment's cost relative to that campaign's average. Free to cite with a link.

The series: HR · IT and engineering · finance · marketing · sales · C-suite and founders · by company size. Each uses the same method and the same table shape.