LinkedIn Advertising Costs By CPM
Always fresh LinkedIn ad cost data from hundreds of millions of dollars of spend.
How Much Do LinkedIn Ads Cost?
LinkedIn Ads are sold in an auction environment, where you bid for ad space against other advertisers. For CPM, calculate the cost of each ad campaign like this:
(Total Ad Spend ÷ Total Impressions) x 1,000.
But the LinkedIn Advertising cost to show your ad 1,000 times changes based on a few variables:
- Supply and demand of your target audience
- Engagement (Do your ads stand out? Are they relevant to your audience?)
- Targeting criteria: same or non-same across ad campaigns and ad groups.
- Advertising budget (daily or accelerated)
- Max bid amount
- Ad formats
- Schedule and seasonality (competitive swings)
- Your objective: do you want to wave your brand flag around or search for buyers?
- Past performance
CPM (cost per mille) is one of many ways to analyze your costs and compare your CPMs to other ad platforms. With CPM, you pay for eyeballs on your ads (not clicks or conversions).
LinkedIn gives you tools and settings to tweak the cost per result to a degree, but the end cost will not exceed your budget ceilings you get to set yourself.
The cost to advertise on LinkedIn comes down to three things:
- Budgets & bids
- Ad formats
- Your competition.
Budgets & Bids
Ad Formats
Competition
LinkedIn wants users to enjoy using its platform, so it rewards you for having high performing ads with high engagement by charging you less.
Build a better ad, pay bottom dollar for it.
But say your ad doesn’t perform well (bummer). LinkedIn will charge you a higher CPM to show your ads 1,000 times.
LinkedIn's Engagement Equation
LinkedIn measures engagement (user value) by multiplying your bid (how much you’ll pay to get 1,000 eyes on your ad) by the amount of action that bid could get (based on historical ad performance, user behavior, and engagement scores).
But if your ad gets a lot of engagement with its 1,000 impressions, your score will go up, and your LinkedIn Ad costs will go down. Creating relevant and engaging ads is super important to improve your engagement score, leading to lower advertising costs.
Outside of this equation, though, there are levers like thumb/scroll stop rates and other metrics you can’t see behind LinkedIn’s curtain.
What Else Affects CPM (Cost per 1,000 Impressions)?
Optimize your campaign around Cost per Mille (CPM) to maximize your brand visibility and reach. But keep these things in mind before you bid:
Industry & Target Audience
- Premium industries like finance ($8-$12) and tech/SaaS ($7-$11) have higher CPMs
- Targeting senior decision-makers increases costs by 20-30%
- Broad audiences typically have lower CPMs but may sacrifice relevance
Campaign Objective
- Brand awareness campaigns usually have lower costs than conversion objectives
- Reach-focused campaigns may sacrifice some targeting precision for lower costs
- Video campaigns typically have higher CPMs but can deliver better engagement
Ad Format & Placement
- Sponsored Content typically has higher CPMs ($7-$11)
- Text Ads often have lower CPMs ($3-$5) but limited visibility
- Premium placement (top of feed) commands higher CPMs
- Desktop vs. mobile placement can affect costs
- Send for Sponsored InMail involves a per-message expense, with costs varying based on business spending behaviors
Ending thoughts…
Paid media is an art and a science, and experts who live in this environment every day have a lot of great insight into what works and what doesn’t. But here are some nutshell “go get ‘em” tips from the pros:
- Use all possible ad formats to compete across LinkedIn’s ad inventory
- Work on improving your ad relevance score through continuous testing to allocate your budget better. This directly ties into ad performance in the auction
- Pay attention to leading indicators
- Refine your strategy
- Balance the price tag of advertising against metrics that have a bigger business impact
In other words, set business goals—don’t cheap out—for your LinkedIn Ads account, then ignore the top-of-funnel micro metrics for the sake of the more important, farther-down-the-funnel indicators. Pull back and ask, “What impact does this have on our business?” If the answer is “a ton,” trust in your brand, lay your money down, and watch what happens.
Use our LinkedIn Ads cost charts above to find the average cost by your campaign objective.
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We Spent Hours Compiling The Best Questions & Our Favorite Answers, Enjoy
Don’t see an answer to your question? Ask it during your free marketing plan.
1
What is cost per impression?
Unlike cost per click (where you pay for each ad click) or cost per conversion (the cost per click multiplied by the conversion rate), cost per impression (CPM) is where you pay for every 1,000 times your ad shows.
You pay to wave at your someday fans so they remember you when they have their credit card out and are ready to buy what you sell.
2
What does CPM mean on LinkedIn?
CPM is an acronym that stands for cost per mille. Mille means one thousand, and M is the Roman numeral for 1,000. Through a CPM calculation, you pay every time LinkedIn shows you an ad one thousand times (impressions). CPM is calculated by dividing your spend by impressions (showings) and multiplying that by 1,000.
For example, if you spend $5 and your ad shows 2,000 times, your CPM is $2.50.
(($5/2,000)*1,000)=$2.50).
It costs $2.50 for 1,000 impressions.
3
How much does LinkedIn advertising cost per 1,000 impressions?
LinkedIn charges somewhere in the ballpark of $6-$10 per 1,000 impressions (views), but rates vary based on
1) Ad format (text ads cost less than video ads, for example)
2) Target audience (seniority level and industry greatly swing cost)For example, targeting a C-suite professional in the finance industry should cost more than targeting a middle manager in the education field).
3) Competition
High competition times might see a 20-30% increase
Low competition times might see a 10-20% decrease4) Ad Quality
High engagement score could lower CPM by 10-25%
Low engagement score could increase CPM by 10-30%4
What costs more: bidding on LinkedIn Ads by CPC or CPM?
This isn’t the right question, but we’ll play ball. Here are some averages:
- The average LinkedIn cost per click (CPC) on LinkedIn can easily range from $5 to $20.
- The average CPM on LinkedIn can range from $20 to hundreds of dollars.
These “average” numbers are benchmarks. Different ad formats and objectives have different CPCs and CPMs.
But! Cost isn’t the most important factor in a paid LinkedIn Advertising campaign. The average cost per conversion on LinkedIn can range wildly, while producing a return on ad spend (ROAS) that’s right for the business.
The lesson here is to bid based on your specific business goals and objectives and target audience, not on cost alone in a silo.
5
Why is my LinkedIn Cost per impression so high?
Lots of reasons. But we won’t know until we look closely while giving you your free marketing plan. Here could be a few reasons:
- Skimping on ad creatives across ad formats (you miss out on all the ad auctions)
- Audience fatigue (the same audience got bored of seeing your ad)
- Creative fatigue (combination of audience fatigue and poor performing creative. This is especially true for non-retargeting campaigns)
- Your offer doesn’t line up with the intent of your audience
- Your offer simply isn’t good enough
- The competition targeting similar audiences is high
- Campaign objective (different objectives have different KPIs/different costs)
- Individual ad format (newsfeed ads vs conversation ads have wildly different costs, for example)