LinkedIn Ads benchmarks for marketing audiences 2026: what it costs to reach marketers, from 215 accounts and $4.4M

This is the fourth of seven audience cuts of Kiin Labs' LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks 2026: what advertisers pay when the campaign's targeting includes the Marketing job function. It is the audience most LinkedIn advertisers know best, because a large share of them are marketers selling to marketers, which is also why it is the most contested and the most engaged. 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. 181 accounts.

Against the whole 944-account panel (CPM $36.23, landing page CTR 0.23%, cost per landing page click $17.54), marketers cost 15% more per impression and 19% more per visit. Total CTR (LinkedIn's column) is 1.08% at the median, double the panel, because marketers react, comment and expand posts; the landing page CTR is ordinary. This is the function where the click column in Campaign Manager is most misleading.

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

296 lead-generation-objective campaigns, 71 accounts, $936,401, 4,361 leads; 4 accounts got no lead at all.

The best feed conversion in the series: 9.1% completion at the median (4.5% to 15.6%) and $257 a lead, with only four of 71 accounts getting no lead. Document ads complete at 16.7% and cost $181 a lead; single image, video and carousel 5.1% and $300. Marketers fill in forms for templates, benchmarks and swipe files, and they do it on the first impression. In the lead gen forms study, a marketing-function content lead sat mid-table. The full guide is LinkedIn lead gen forms: specs, setup, conversion rates and CPL.

By seniority targeted

Marketing is the one function where the director-and-above filter is the cheapest lead: $205 at 13.5% completion, against $304 for manager-and-above and $257 with no filter. Marketing directors download benchmarks; marketing managers scroll. The CPM premium for director-plus is 22% ($49.26 against $40.39) and the click costs about the same, so for marketing the senior filter pays for itself on the form.

By company size targeted

Company size targeting is the lever for marketing leads: SMB-only (1 to 200 employees) marketing leads cost $112, mid-market $152, enterprise $239, and no size filter $340. Impressions are cheapest for mid-market ($33.29) and dearest with no filter ($46.36). Marketers at small companies are the most responsive audience in the whole series; whether they can buy is the question the CRM answers.

UK and US

Marketing is the function where the UK is expensive: $58 CPM at the median, against $43 for IT and finance in the UK, and $72 in the US. UK agencies and martech vendors bid against each other for the same 40,000 marketing directors. The US is dearer still per visit ($36.64 against $23.02) and per lead ($564 against $472). 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:

Directors take the biggest share of impressions at a $72 pooled CPM and the best landing page CTR (0.26%); senior ICs are the second-biggest slice at $47 with a 0.14% rate. CXO impressions cost 14% more than the campaign average and click through to landing pages at 58% of the campaign rate: CMOs react, they do not visit. Owner impressions cost 19% more. On company size, impressions to 2-to-10 and 11-to-50-person companies cost 8 to 22% more than the campaign average and click through at a third of the rate of 1,001-plus companies; that is freelance marketers and micro-agencies, and they should be excluded unless they are the customer.

Audience size and frequency

The median campaign in this cut runs to 26,000 members (middle half 7,700 to 99,000). Within a campaign, as cumulative impressions pass through the audience:

Marketing audiences are small (median 26,000 members, the smallest in the series) and fatigue accordingly: click rate down 5% after one pass, 6 to 8% by three passes, 12% after five, and the CPM rises 4 to 6% past three passes rather than falling, because LinkedIn is running out of cheap impressions to serve. Refresh creative every two weeks on audiences under 30,000. The reasoning is in LinkedIn ad frequency and fatigue.

How Kiin targets marketers

• Titles first, because the function is too broad. Marketing function alone reaches social media executives and event coordinators; the buyer is Head of Marketing, VP Marketing, CMO, Marketing Director, Head of Demand Generation, Head of Growth, Head of Performance Marketing. Titles plus company size, 15,000 to 40,000 members, for both content and the ask.
• Exclude agencies, freelancers and one-to-ten-person companies unless they are the customer. They are a third of unfiltered marketing impressions and click at a third of the rate.
• Director-plus for the lead gen campaign ($205 a lead at 13.5% completion, the cheapest in the seniority table for marketing), manager-plus for the retargeting pool.
• Document ads with the asset as the document: benchmark reports, templates, teardowns. 16.7% completion and $181 a lead in this cut.
• Report landing page clicks, not clicks. Marketers double the total CTR with reactions; the visit rate is average. The Campaign Manager column will flatter every marketing campaign.
• Two-week creative refresh on audiences under 30,000, because the CPM rises past three passes instead of falling.

Who this is for

Companies selling to marketing teams: martech and marketing automation, analytics and attribution, ABM platforms, content and SEO tools, social and creative tools, event platforms, data and enrichment, agencies and consultancies selling to in-house marketing, and media and research businesses whose buyer is the marketing director.

Method and citation

Campaigns whose job-function targeting includes Marketing, 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: 1,453 campaigns, 215 advertiser accounts, $4,428,579. 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.