Buy side · what advertisers pay

LinkedIn CPM

By Oliver Wakefield-Smith · updated October 2026

Benchmarks reviewed October 2026 · next review January 2027

The short answer

LinkedIn's pricing page describes the auction and budget controls and publishes no rate, and we found no dated public tracker for it. So the useful question is not "what is the average" but "how high can my LinkedIn CPM go before a broad channel reaches buyers more cheaply". The premium buys targeting no other auction sells cleanly: job titles, seniority, company.

From LinkedIn itselfno published rateLinkedIn describes auction pricing and budget controls; it publishes no average CPMLinkedIn ads pricing pageretrieved July 2026

Meta, for scale$10.02Meta (Facebook and Instagram combined) average CPM, December 2025, the latest month in the public tableGupta Media Social CPM Tracker, public monthly tableretrieved October 2026

The cost-per-qualified-reach reframe

Raw CPM comparisons flatter broad channels. Divide instead by the share of impressions that hit your actual buyer. LinkedIn wins whenever its CPM is below the broad channel's CPM multiplied by the ratio of the two match rates:

break-even LinkedIn CPM = broad CPM × (LinkedIn match ÷ broad match)

$10.02 Meta (Dec 2025) × (0.80 ÷ 0.15 assumed match) = $53.44

Match rates are stated assumptions to show the mechanism, not measurements. Substitute your own; the crossover is what matters.

With those stated assumptions, any LinkedIn CPM below $53.44 reaches decision-makers more cheaply than Meta does. Read your real LinkedIn CPM from Campaign Manager and compare. If your product sells to everyone, the match rates converge and the math flips the other way. Full worked comparison: LinkedIn vs Facebook.

Why the premium exists at all

Firmographic scarcity. There is exactly one large auction where seniority and company-level targeting is first-party data. Scarce supply, concentrated B2B demand, higher clearing price.
High-value competition. Your auction rivals are bidding with B2B unit economics: five-figure contract values absorb high CPMs without noticing.
Format and objective spread.Sponsored content, message ads and video clear at different prices, so any single "LinkedIn average" you meet blends things your campaign is not buying.

Whether your LinkedIn CPM is expensive is a question about the audience, not the arithmetic: is my CPM good? Solve your own numbers in the calculator. Full table: /rates.