---
title: "How we counted | 2026 B2B Benchmark"
url: https://metadata.io/benchmark/methodology
description: "How the 2026 B2B Paid Media Benchmark was counted: 153 advertisers, $57.6M of 2025 ad spend, CRM pipeline for 90 of them, what each number means and when a number is published."
source: metadata.io
---

# How we counted

153 advertisers, $57.6M of 2025 ad spend and the CRM pipeline behind 90 of them. Two pages on what is in the data and how every published number is built.

## What is in the data

153 B2B advertisers ran $57.6M of paid media through Metadata in calendar 2025 and generated 211,000 leads. LinkedIn carried 69.6% of the spend, Google Ads 15.2%, Facebook 10.6% and Instagram 4.3%. Reddit and Microsoft Ads are in the totals and too small to publish on their own.

Cost per lead, cost per click and click-through come from every advertiser. Pipeline and cost per customer come from the 90 advertisers whose CRM is connected to Metadata: $43.3M of lead-generation spend, joined to every Salesforce opportunity created in 2025.

| Channel | Advertisers | Share of 2025 spend |
|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn | 152 | 69.6% |
| Google Ads | 65 | 15.2% |
| Facebook | 81 | 10.6% |
| Instagram | 50 | 4.3% |

## What each number means

## When a number is published

Every media number has at least 5 advertisers and $50,000 of spend behind it. Every pipeline number has at least 8. No advertiser is more than half of a published media number or 40% of a published pipeline number. A segment that misses the bar is left out of the report and the explorer.

One advertiser with a transactional CRM (thousands of small deals) is counted in pipeline totals and left out of cost-per-customer figures.

### What we left out

- Pipeline totals by audience type, where one advertiser held more than 40% of the result.
- Cost per customer by company size outside LinkedIn.
- Reddit and Microsoft Ads as segments of their own.

## How to cite this data