What $57.6M of B2B ad spend actually delivered
Aggregated and anonymized results from 150+ B2B advertisers across LinkedIn, Meta, Google Ads and Reddit — 171,000 leads tracked all the way to closed-won revenue. No email gate. Filter it yourself below.
Retargeting looks fine on cost per lead…
…and collapses when you follow the revenue
The same dataset, read two ways. This is why the report ships with a toggle: the metric you optimize decides the strategy you believe in. Flip the lens and watch the winner change.
Prospecting
Retargeting
Tactical benchmarks: where the efficiency hides
Every number below is computed from lead-generation campaigns in the dataset — the same pipeline that powers the explorer. Full playbook in the tactical deep-dive.
Channel economics: expensive clicks can be cheap leads
LinkedIn clicks cost 3.1x more than Facebook — but convert at 2.3x the rate. The per-lead gap is far smaller than the per-click gap suggests.
On LinkedIn, Lead Gen Forms cut CPL 44%
Sending LinkedIn traffic to a landing page nearly doubled cost per lead. On Meta, the form-versus-landing-page gap all but disappears — keep the landing page and the intent data it gives you.
Document ads are LinkedIn's efficiency king
Cheapest cost per lead of any major LinkedIn format, with a conversion rate roughly double the platform average.
The retargeting split: maximize Meta, cap LinkedIn
Facebook retargeting delivers leads 28% cheaper than Facebook prospecting. On LinkedIn the trap springs the other way: retargeting runs at a 21% premium as small pools fatigue.
Strategic benchmarks: CPL is a liar
$31.5M of lead-generation spend, 171,000 leads, tracked into CRM revenue. Directly-attributed ("triggered") and influenced pipeline tell a different story than lead costs do.
The pipeline hierarchy
Every lead-gen dollar directly triggered $1.45 of closed-won revenue and influenced far more. When ads create the opportunity, it closes at 64.2% — the bottleneck is creating the right opportunities, not closing them.
The audience reversal
Retargeting wins the CPL beauty contest and loses the revenue war: prospecting returned 3x the triggered ROI at roughly one-fifth the CAC.
Document ads dominate both lenses
The one recommendation the tactical and strategic reads agree on: cheapest leads on LinkedIn and the strongest pipeline economics of any format.
Video is an awareness tool, not a pipeline tool
Video returned $0.24 of triggered closed-won revenue per dollar — the weakest of any format — with a CAC north of $33,000. Use it to build demand, not to harvest it.
Explore the benchmarks
Filter $57.6M of spend by company size, industry, channel, ad type and campaign goal. Every view has a shareable URL. Segments that would aggregate fewer than 5 advertisers are suppressed to protect anonymity.
Not enough data for a reliable benchmark here.
This combination aggregates fewer than 5 advertisers (or under $50K of spend), so it is suppressed to protect anonymity. Try broadening a filter.
Lead metrics (CPL, conversion rate) are computed across lead-generation campaigns; delivery metrics (CPM, CPC, CTR) across all campaigns in the segment. Pipeline metrics cover the $31.5M lead-gen subset with CRM attribution. Full methodology.
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The full report (PDF)
Key findings, both deep-dives and the methodology in one document — built from the same verified data pipeline as this page.
Download the PDFTactical deep-dive
For the people running campaigns: destinations by channel, the format playbook, and the three-step fix for LinkedIn retargeting fatigue.
Read part 1Strategic deep-dive
For the people defending budgets: triggered vs influenced revenue, the audience reversal, and where direct-response budgets go to die.
Read part 2Methodology & anonymization
What's in the data. $57.6M of 2025 B2B advertising spend from 150+ Metadata customer ad accounts across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads and Reddit, spanning 171,000 generated leads. Pipeline metrics cover the $31.5M subset of lead-generation campaigns with CRM opportunity attribution.
Triggered vs influenced. "Triggered" revenue is attributed only when the ad-generated lead directly created the opportunity. "Influenced" counts opportunities the campaign touched anywhere in the journey. Triggered is the conservative number; influenced is the ceiling.
How metrics are computed. All metrics are spend-weighted aggregates recomputed from raw totals (e.g. CPL = total spend ÷ total leads), never averages of averages. CPL and conversion rate are computed across lead-generation-objective campaigns; CPM, CPC and CTR across all campaigns in a segment.
Anonymization. Every published segment aggregates at least 5 distinct advertisers and $50,000 of spend, with no single advertiser contributing more than 50% of segment spend. Pipeline metrics additionally require at least 3 closed-won opportunities. Only rounded ratio metrics are published — never per-account values or absolute segment totals. Segments below these thresholds are suppressed entirely (1,724 of 2,132 possible tactical segments and 944 of 1,094 strategic segments in this edition). An automated test attempts to isolate individual advertisers on every build and blocks publication if it succeeds.
Repeatability. This report is regenerated annually from the same pipeline. 2025 spend, generated 2026.
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