---
title: "Retargeting sourced 9.6x of pipeline per $1 at $196 a lead. Cold prospecting cost $187. | 2026 B2B Benchmark"
url: https://metadata.io/benchmark-report-2026/insights/create-vs-capture
description: "Retargeting sourced 9.6x pipeline per $1 in 2025 at $196 a lead. Cold prospecting cost $187 a lead. All lead-gen spend returned 7.97x."
source: metadata.io
---

## What to do with it

Keep retargeting funded even when its cost per lead looks no better than cold. It pays on pipeline.

Give cold and retargeting their own budget lines. Cold creates the demand that retargeting harvests; judge each on its own pipeline.

That retargeting is the cheap half. It cost $196 a lead against $187 cold.

## The numbers

| Audience | Cost per lead |
|---|---|
| Retargeting | $196 |
| Cold prospecting | $187 |

153 advertisers, $57.6M of 2025 spend, CRM pipeline for 90 of them. Pipeline is the value of opportunities the CRM credits to an ad-generated lead.

[Filter these numbers by company size, industry and channel](https://metadata.io/benchmark-report-2026/explorer)

## Next findings