Key takeaways
- Good CTR cold: above 0.8%, above 1% evergreen. Retargeting runs closer to ~1.5%.
- Good CPC: €4 to €8 cold, €2 to €4 warm.
- Good CPL: content lead €30 to €150 (under €50 is very good), demo warm €50 to €200, cold €400 to €1,200.
- CPM: around €30 to €34.
- Before any comparison: cold or warm, which format, how large the audience.
Nearly every B2B team asks this at some point: is my number actually good? The honest answer is, it depends. A CPL of €200 is strong for a demo from retargeting and far too expensive for a lead magnet. This page gives you the benchmarks and the context you need to read them correctly.
Two different questions, two different pages. What things cost and how much budget you need is covered by What Do LinkedIn Ads Cost? and the Budget guide. Whether your number is good is what this page answers. You plan costs upfront, you check benchmarks while a campaign is live.
The benchmark traffic light: good, watch, alarm
The fastest way to size up a live campaign: every metric has three zones. Green means keep going, yellow means watch it, red means step in. The traffic light is calibrated to a cold Single Image ad, the toughest benchmark. Warm audiences and stronger formats naturally perform better.
| Metric | Good | Watch | Alarm (step in) |
|---|---|---|---|
| CTR Single Image (cold) | > 0.8% (above 1% evergreen) | 0.35 to 0.8% | < 0.35% |
| CPC (cold) | €4 to €8 (under €4 is very good) | €8 to €15 | consistently above €15 |
| CPM | €30 to €34 | €34 to €40 | > €40 |
| Lead form completion rate | > 15% | ~ 10% | < 10% |
For click-through rate, a finer scale helps: below 0.35 percent, pull the ad; above 0.5 percent, it's worth optimizing; above 0.8 percent, you're in good shape; above 1 percent, the ad is running as an evergreen. And a CPC above €8 is rarely a bidding problem, it's a targeting signal, excluding C-suite titles often helps. Which levers to pull and in what order is covered in the guide to optimizing your campaigns.
What's a good CPL?
The most-asked question, and the one with the least satisfying answer: it depends on the lead type and the temperature. A cheap content lead and an expensive but sales-ready lead are two completely different things.
| Lead type | CPL benchmark | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Content/marketing lead (lead magnet, whitepaper, checklist) | €30 to €150 | under €50 is very good |
| Sales/demo lead, warm (retargeting) | €50 to €200 | target for a mature funnel |
| Sales/demo lead, cold | €400 to €1,200 | expensive, don't go straight for the demo here |
A CPL without context tells you nothing. €40 for a checklist and €400 for a cold first conversation can both be good or bad. What matters isn't the price of the lead, it's what sales makes of it. How you evaluate lead quality instead of staring only at CPL is ultimately the more important lever.
Benchmarks by funnel stage: cold vs. warm
The biggest jump across every metric sits between cold and warm. Run the same ad against a warm audience instead of a cold one, and you get nearly triple the click-through rate at half the cost per click, purely because those people already know you.
| Metric | Cold (top of funnel) | Warm (retargeting) |
|---|---|---|
| CTR | 0.4 to 0.8% | ~ 1.5% |
| CPC | €4 to €8 | €2 to €4 |
| CPL sales/demo lead | €400 to €1,200 | €50 to €200 |
The reason is simple: only around 3 to 5 percent of an audience is ready to buy at any given moment. The rest needs prior contact. That's why retargeting is the cheapest lever on LinkedIn, and why you never send a cold audience straight to the demo.
A good CTR is a matter of format
The bar for click-through rate shifts by format. A video at 0.44 percent isn't an outlier, it's normal, people watch it instead of clicking it. So always compare your ad against its own format, not against the overall average.
| Format | CTR benchmark |
|---|---|
| Thought Leader Ad | ~ 0.95% |
| Single Image | ~ 0.57% |
| Event Ad | ~ 0.55% |
| Video | ~ 0.44% |
| Document Ad | ~ 0.43% |
| Carousel | ~ 0.40% |
| Spotlight / Dynamic | ~ 0.08% |
| Text Ad | ~ 0.02% |
If a format sits noticeably below its benchmark, check the copy first, then the image. What each format is good for and when it pays off is covered in Ad Formats.
What your benchmarks depend on
Four variables noticeably shift every number on this page. Know them, and you compare fairly:
- Format: a Thought Leader Ad (~0.95%) gets clicked noticeably more often than a Single Image ad (~0.57%) or a video (~0.44%). People click on people.
- Cold vs. warm: the biggest lever. Warm cuts CPC in half and nearly triples CTR, because only 3 to 5 percent of your audience is ready to buy at any given time.
- Audience size: a healthy range is 30,000 to 80,000 people. Too small chokes delivery, too broad dilutes targeting and drives up cost. Retargeting works from around 300 onward, and runs stable from 1,000. Narrow job titles and C-suite targeting make each click more expensive. How to scope this cleanly is covered in Targeting.
- Industry: click-through rates vary a lot between audiences, HR reacts differently than finance. Treat these benchmarks as a starting point, not a verdict.
Reading video, completion rate, and frequency correctly
Three metrics that often get misread because they aren't measured in euros:
- Video view rate: aim for above 29 percent. If it's lower, rework the first few seconds, skip the intro and get straight to the point.
- Lead form completion rate: 10 percent and up is normal, above 15 percent is very good. Below 10 percent, it's almost always the form itself or the handoff from the creative to the form.
- Frequency: your average contact rate, meaning how often the same person sees your ad on average. It's your early warning system for ad fatigue: if frequency climbs faster than reach, the ad is wearing out and you need fresh creative.
How to use these benchmarks without chasing your tail
Three rules keep you on track. First: pin down funnel stage, format, and audience before you compare anything. Second: don't fixate on a single number. A high CTR paired with a poor conversion rate isn't a win, that's one of the most common LinkedIn Ads mistakes. Third: wait for enough data, at least 3,000 to 5,000 impressions, 20 to 30 clicks, or seven to fourteen days, before you judge. Change course earlier than that and you're optimizing for noise.
Pin your own target numbers next to the dashboard, not the market averages. Your best benchmark is your last good campaign. If the new ad beats your own personal best, you're on the right track, no matter what the industry average says. And don't tweak bids every day, a fixed bidding strategy handles that better.