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As LinkedIn continues to reduce the reach of organic (unpaid) posts for Company Pages, B2B marketers are forced to reach for their corporate credit cards to reach customers on the platform. In 2023, $6B of the platform’s revenue was from advertising, with that number expected to grow significantly in 2024 and beyond.
If you’re one of the many marketers shifting towards a paid advertising strategy on LinkedIn, how can you ensure your ads deliver results? The key lies in setting clear goals for your LinkedIn Ads performance and tracking the right metrics to measure success.
Here, we dive into setting goals for your LinkedIn Ads and how to tie metrics and benchmarks to those goals. We’ve outlined 9 of the most important metrics to measure along with key benchmarks to evaluate your LinkedIn Ads performance.
Metrics to Measure: Impressions, Reach, Video Views
One common goal with ads—whether on social media, other digital platforms, or even in traditional ads like billboards or print ads—is to get as many eyes on your ad as possible.
Maximizing exposure is perfect for brand awareness or targeting a group of people who don’t know your brand, service, or product yet. You want to get as many views on your ads as possible.
Within LinkedIn Ads, exposure is measured by Impressions, Reach, and—if you’re working with a video ad—Video Views.
In the Campaign dashboard, you can see all 3 metrics in the Delivery view.
In the Performance Chart dashboard, you can see each metric individually and dig in by day.
The Impressions metric indicates the number of times an ad shows up in the feed.
In this example, we saw about 4,500 Impressions per month when advertising to a group of about 1,500 people.
The number of Impressions you get will vary a lot based on the size of the audience you’re advertising to.
We like to look at Databox’s Benchmark Groups to explore what other advertisers are seeing on the platform. According to their data from August 2024, 80,700 is the benchmark for median number of Impressions per month.
This assumes that the audience is much larger than our example. LinkedIn suggests a minimum audience size of 50,000, but you can go as low as 300 for a hyper-targeted audience—we often target groups of around 1,000!
The Reach metric indicates the number of individuals who have seen the ad.
The Video Views metric indicates how many times a video ad was viewed for at least 3 seconds.
Metrics to Measure: Clicks, Average CTR (Click-Through Rate), Total Engagement, and Engagement Rate
There are a lot of Engagement metrics to look at in LinkedIn Ads. All can provide insight, but we think these four are key.
Clicks include all clicks on the ad. These could include clicks to a landing page, your LinkedIn Company Page, Social Actions (Reactions), and more.
According to Databox Benchmarks’ data from August 2024, 392 is the benchmark for median number of Clicks per month. The number of Clicks will vary depending on your Ad type, budget, audience size, and more.
The Average Click-Through Rate is equal to the number of Clicks divided by the number of Impressions. This is a great measure of success no matter your audience size or budget.
According to LinkedIn’s own reporting as of January 2024, the average CTR for LinkedIn Ads in the U.S. is up to 0.87% for Single Image Ads.
According to Databox Benchmarks’ data from August 2024, 0.53% is the benchmark for median CTR per month. This doesn’t break the numbers down by ad type, but is very inline with LinkedIn’s own reporting.
We’ve seen performance comparable to these benchmarks in our own work for various Ad types.
Total Engagement includes all interactions with your ad. This could include Clicks, Social Actions, Comments, and more.
The number of Total Engagements will vary depending on your Ad type, audience size, and more.
According to Databox Benchmarks’ data from August 2024, 696 is the benchmark for median Engagements per month.
The Engagement Rate is equal to the number of Engagements divided by the number of Impressions. This is a great measure of success no matter your audience size or budget.
According to LinkedIn’s own reporting as of January 2024, the average Engagement Rate for LinkedIn Ads in the U.S. is up to 8.15% for Document Ads.
Here are the Engagement Rates we’ve seen for various LinkedIn Ad types in our own work:
Metrics to Measure: Cost Per Lead, Lead Form Completion Rate, Number of Leads
Your bottom-of-funnel LinkedIn Ad Campaigns should have goals to generate leads.
LinkedIn’s built-in Lead Forms are a great tool to gather leads. You’ll get an email each time a lead comes through, you can download a CSV of your leads. You can even integrate LinkedIn Ads with Mailchimp or another ESP or CRM and send them automated emails when leads come through.
According to LinkedIn’s own reporting as of January 2024, the average Cost Per Lead for LinkedIn Ads in the U.S. ranges from $107–$433 depending on the Ad type.
Lead Form Completion Rate is the percentage of form submissions divided by form opens
According to LinkedIn’s own reporting, Lead Form Completion Rates for Single Image Ads can range from 2.86%–15.16% depending on the call to action.
According to Databox Benchmarks’ data from August 2024, 8 is the benchmark for median number of Leads per month on LinkedIn Ads.
As a Certified Databox Benchmarks Partner, we host a free Benchmark Group that calculates the median, top quartile, and bottom quartile B2B LinkedIn Ads performance. Members can join anonymously and see how their performance compares to the group. The group is made up of around 360 other B2B, Enterprise, and SaaS companies.
Are your LinkedIn Ads performing well, or is there room for improvement? Are your Impressions higher than others? Are you getting an average amount of Clicks and Leads? Join our Benchmark Group to find out or book a no-cost consultation with us.
Tracking your LinkedIn Ads performance is essential for maximizing the return on your advertising investment. By focusing on key metrics like Impressions, CTR, Engagement, and Cost Per Lead, you can measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and make data-driven optimizations.
Using LinkedIn’s built-in dashboards and leveraging tools like Databox Benchmarks, you’ll be able to compare your performance against industry standards and gain deeper insights into how your ads stack up against your competitors.
To stay ahead, we recommend regularly reviewing your LinkedIn Ads metrics—either monthly or quarterly—and creating performance reports to track progress, identify trends, and refine your strategy. With the right goals and metrics in place, you’ll be well-equipped to drive greater success with your LinkedIn Ads.
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Angela and her team at Noble Intent Studio provide digital marketing for in-house teams and custom websites for evolving brands. Angela specializes in B2B marketing and advertising on LinkedIn—connecting client objectives to end-user experience with strategic and inclusive design.
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