Benchmark · 2025 data · updated 2026-09-11

LinkedIn vs Facebook vs Instagram ads for B2B: the head-to-head numbers

The three paid social channels on one table, from B2B advertisers running them in 2025: $57.6M of measured spend across 153 advertisers, with closed-won revenue traced back to the ads. No email gate. The method is published and the dataset is available. Until 2026-09-11 this URL carried a 90-day snapshot from mid-2024; every figure below supersedes it.

Which paid social channel is cheapest for B2B leads?

Instagram, at $138 per lead in 2025, then Facebook at $145 and LinkedIn at $202. Google Ads, the paid search comparison, sits at $524. The LinkedIn row is drawn from 138 advertisers, the widest sample in the set.

Read CPM within the channel type only. A feed impression on LinkedIn and one on Facebook are comparable units; a search impression is not, which is why Google Ads is kept off this table and on the cross-channel benchmarks page.

Is LinkedIn or Facebook better for B2B ads?

Facebook is cheaper per lead ($145 against $202) and per click ($1.95 against $9.39). LinkedIn converts more of its clicks: 5.9% become leads against 2.6% on Facebook. Neither number decides a budget on its own.

Inside lead-generation campaigns the gap is wider still: a LinkedIn click costs $11.90 against $3.80 on Facebook, and the lead-gen conversion rates hold at 5.9% and 2.6%. The number that should decide the split is what a customer cost, and that exists for only one of the two channels: a LinkedIn lead became a $63,312 customer. The Facebook figure is withheld because a single advertiser held too much of the result. The LinkedIn page carries the p10-to-p90 spread; the Meta page splits Facebook from Instagram.

Which channel has the best click-through rate for B2B?

Facebook, at 0.79%, then LinkedIn at 0.67% and Instagram at 0.65%. The whole spread is 14 basis points. Click-through is a within-channel creative metric, not a cross-channel scorecard: Google Ads runs 6.33% because the click follows a typed intent.

The practical reading: judge creative on CTR against its own channel's number, and judge the channel on cost per lead and, where it exists, cost per customer. A team moving budget between LinkedIn and Facebook on a 0.12-point CTR difference is moving it on noise.

Is retargeting cheaper than prospecting on paid social?

Only on Facebook. Retargeting there costs $120 per lead against $166 for prospecting. On LinkedIn the pattern inverts: $234 retargeting against $194 prospecting. A warm audience is not automatically a cheap one.

No Instagram prospecting-versus-retargeting cut is published in this dataset. Across all channels, demand-creation (cold) campaigns produced leads at $187 and retargeting at $196, from 105 and 85 advertisers.

Which ad format produces the cheapest leads on each channel?

Document ads on LinkedIn, at $142 per lead against $200 for image, $265 for video and $362 for conversation ads. On Facebook, image at $136 against $225 for video. Video is the dearest format on both channels.

Document ads also convert best of any LinkedIn format, at 11.9% of clicks, and hold only 8.5% of cold-audience spend.

Does Instagram work for B2B advertising?

On lead cost, yes: $138 per lead, the cheapest of the three, at a 4.0% click-to-lead rate that beats Facebook's 2.6%. Cold Instagram audiences run $153 per lead across 37 advertisers. What is not published is what an Instagram customer cost, so the channel is priced to the lead, not to revenue.

For how to run Facebook and Instagram on these numbers, with the audience and format cuts, see Meta ads for B2B: what Facebook and Instagram actually deliver.

Does the cheapest lead make the cheapest customer?

Not here. LinkedIn's $202 lead became a $63,312 customer at 0.57x back on the ad dollar, against $58,887 and 0.56x across the 127 advertisers followed into the CRM. Facebook and Instagram customer costs are withheld, not estimated.

The wider finding is the blank itself. Of 105 advertisers running lead-generation spend, 65 had no closed-won revenue traceable to their ads at all. A cheap lead on any of the three channels tells you what the form fill cost; it does not tell you whether the channel closes. The cost-per-lead illusion page works through the arithmetic channel by channel.

How were these numbers calculated?

Spend-weighted aggregates across B2B advertisers who ran each channel in 2025, with revenue counted only where the ad-generated lead opened the deal. Cuts below the suppression thresholds, or dominated by one advertiser, were withheld rather than caveated. The full method names the rules and the dataset is CC BY 4.0.

This URL previously carried a 90-day snapshot covering June to August 2024. Those figures were retired on 2026-09-11 and replaced by the full-year 2025 dataset above, so that every Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn number on this domain agrees with the B2B advertising benchmarks page and the LinkedIn cost post.