LinkedIn Ads vs Google Ads statistics at a glance
| Category | Statistic | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | LinkedIn B2B cost per click is $9.39 at a 0.67% click-through rate, 138 advertisers, 2025 spend | Metadata, 2026 |
| Cost | Google Ads B2B cost per click is $9.76 at a 6.33% click-through rate, 56 advertisers, same dataset | Metadata, 2026 |
| Cost | LinkedIn CPC is 0.96x Google's inside one B2B dataset, and 1.7x when two different samples are compared | Computed from Metadata and WordStream by LocaliQ, 2026 |
| Leads | B2B cost per lead is $202 on LinkedIn and $524 on Google Ads, spend-weighted | Metadata, 2026 |
| Leads | 5.9% of LinkedIn clicks become leads against 1.9% of Google Ads clicks | Metadata, 2026 |
| Revenue | LinkedIn return on ad spend is 121% in 2025; Google Search sits at 67% | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| Pipeline | Google Search costs 1.57x LinkedIn per company influenced, €110.37 against €70.11 | Computed from Dreamdata, 2026 |
| Search | Google Ads averages $5.42 per click and $66.69 per lead across all industries in 2026 | WordStream by LocaliQ, June 2026 |
| Budget | LinkedIn takes 41% of total B2B ad budgets; non-branded search fell from 37% to 33% | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| Market | LinkedIn revenue reached $19.8 billion in fiscal 2026, up 11%, across all product lines | Microsoft Form 10-K, 2026 |
| Market | Google Search & other revenue was $63.3 billion in Q2 2026 alone, up 17% | Alphabet, July 2026 |
| Market | Google Search & other revenue from the April to June 2026 quarter matches LinkedIn's fiscal-2026 revenue in about 29 days | Computed from Alphabet and Microsoft filings, 2026 |
| Journey | B2B buyers first contact a seller 61% of the way through the journey, and 77% buy from that first vendor | 6sense, 2025 |
How much does a LinkedIn Ads click cost compared with Google Ads?
A LinkedIn Ads click costs $9.39 and a Google Ads click $9.76 for the same pool of B2B advertisers in 2025, according to Metadata's benchmark of 153 advertisers and $57.6 million of spend. The popular "LinkedIn is twice as expensive" line comes from comparing LinkedIn's B2B price with Google's all-industry average.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| LinkedIn costs $9.39 per click and $63.19 per thousand impressions at a 0.67% click-through rate, across 138 B2B advertisers in calendar 2025, spend-weighted. | Metadata, 2026 |
| Google Ads costs $9.76 per click at a 6.33% click-through rate across 56 B2B advertisers in the same 2025 dataset. Metadata doesn't split Google campaign types, but its public dataset shows 55 of the 56 ran text (search) ads, at $9.57 per click. Its $617.91 Google CPM isn't comparable with feed CPMs, Metadata warns. | Metadata, 2026 |
| Google Ads averages $5.42 per click, a 6.64% click-through rate and an 8.18% conversion rate across all industries, from WordStream by LocaliQ's customer campaigns, June 2026. | WordStream by LocaliQ, June 2026 |
| Business Services advertisers on Google Ads pay $5.87 per click and $93.69 per lead, converting at 4.85%, the closest B2B row in the table. | WordStream by LocaliQ, June 2026 |
| LinkedIn cost per click averaged €5.98 among Dreamdata customers in 2025, against €1.60 on Meta. Dreamdata's public summary gives no Google Search CPC. | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| LinkedIn CPC across more than 70 B2B SaaS companies ran from $10.48 in the first quarter, the cheapest, to $15.72 in the third, over $28 million of spend across three years. | HockeyStack Labs, December 2025 |
Three LinkedIn CPCs sit on this page, €5.98, $9.39 and up to $15.72, and all three are honest, from different customers, currencies and seasons. I'd only put Metadata's comparison in a budget deck, because it holds the advertisers constant. On that basis the click price is a wash, so the argument moves down the funnel.
What each click turns into is where the two channels split.
Which costs less per lead, LinkedIn Ads or Google Ads?
LinkedIn Ads produces a B2B lead for $202 and Google Ads for $524 in Metadata's 2025 dataset, because 5.9% of LinkedIn clicks convert into leads against 1.9% of Google Ads clicks at almost the same click price.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| A B2B lead costs $202 on LinkedIn and $524 on Google Ads, spend-weighted across all campaign goals in 2025. | Metadata, 2026 |
| 5.9% of LinkedIn clicks become leads against 1.9% of Google Ads clicks, three times fewer at the same price, in Metadata's words. | Metadata, 2026 |
| The B2B advertiser in the middle of the market pays $920 per Google Ads lead, not the weighted $524, because a few large, efficient spenders pull the average down. | Metadata, 2026 |
| LinkedIn cost per lead spreads from $109 at the 10th percentile to $376 at the median and $1,340 at the 90th, across 88 advertisers in 2025. | Metadata, 2026 |
The two Google cost-per-lead figures, WordStream by LocaliQ's $66.69 and Metadata's $524, don't contradict each other. WordStream by LocaliQ averages every industry it manages, including local services where a lead is a phone call about a leaking tap. Metadata counts only B2B advertisers. If you sell software to companies, plan on $524.
I'd be careful with the LinkedIn win here too. A LinkedIn lead-gen form lead is cheap partly because the form is pre-filled, which converts people who were never going to take a sales call. Searchers often want pricing or a login page, not a gated asset. Cost per lead shows which channel fills forms cheaply, not which one fills the pipeline.
The next step is to follow the leads into the CRM, where the published data thins out.
Which drives more pipeline and revenue, LinkedIn or Google search?
LinkedIn Ads returned 121% on ad spend in 2025 against 67% for Google Search among Dreamdata customers, the only public dataset found for this page that reports revenue for both channels from one source.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| LinkedIn return on ad spend (ROAS) rose to 121% in 2025 from 113% in 2024, across Dreamdata customers' aggregated data of 66 million sessions and 3.5 million customer journeys. | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| Google Search delivered 67% ROAS and Meta 51% in the same Dreamdata dataset for 2025. | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| Among Dreamdata's top-performing customers, LinkedIn ROAS reached 279%, Google Search 138% and Meta 133%. | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| Cost per company influenced was €70.11 on LinkedIn, down from €154 the year before, against €110.37 on Google Search and €128.70 on Meta. | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| LinkedIn lead-generation spend sourced $10.20 of pipeline per dollar at a 19.5% win rate, across 94 advertisers with CRM data connected. | Metadata, 2026 |
| Google Ads lead-generation spend sourced $3.95 of pipeline per dollar across 47 advertisers with CRM data, against about $10.20 on LinkedIn. The middle advertiser sees $1.42 on Google Ads and $1.36 on LinkedIn, so a few large accounts drive the gap. | Metadata benchmark dataset, 2026 |
| LinkedIn cost $58,572 per closed customer and recovered 0.71x of its spend in closed-won revenue. For targets under 200 employees, cost per customer fell to $30,739 and revenue recovered rose to 1.37x. | Metadata, 2026 |
| 42 of 132 advertisers with lead-generation spend had no CRM opportunity signal at all; the 90 that did sourced $7.97 of pipeline per dollar across every channel. | Metadata, 2026 |
Two gaps remain. Metadata's open dataset gives pipeline per dollar for both channels but cost per customer for LinkedIn only, so no same-source cost per opportunity exists for the pair. Dreamdata's public summary doesn't define "company influenced", give a customer count or name its attribution model. The MQL vs SQL statistics page carries Dreamdata's stage timings and conversion rates.
Neither vendor is neutral. Dreamdata lists a LinkedIn partnership in its own site menu, and 69.6% of Metadata's measured spend is LinkedIn. I still read the direction as real, because two vendors with different attribution methods land on the same side. The medians keep me honest: Metadata's typical advertiser gets about the same pipeline per dollar from both, so I'd never quote 121% as a platform fact.
The two businesses come next.
How big are LinkedIn and Google as advertising businesses?
LinkedIn's total revenue was $19.8 billion in Microsoft's fiscal 2026, while Google Search & other took $63.3 billion in a single quarter, Q2 2026. Microsoft doesn't disclose LinkedIn advertising revenue in dollars.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| LinkedIn revenue was $19,817 million in the fiscal year to 30 June 2026, up from $17,812 million, an increase of $2.0 billion or 11% "with growth across all lines of business". | Microsoft Form 10-K, fiscal 2026 |
| LinkedIn revenue grew 12%, or 10% in constant currency, in the quarter to 30 June 2026. | Microsoft FY26 Q4 earnings release, July 2026 |
| LinkedIn revenue rose $495 million or 11% in the quarter to 31 December 2025, "driven by growth in Marketing Solutions". | Microsoft FY26 Q2 segment results, January 2026 |
| Google Search & other revenue was $63,271 million in Q2 2026, up 17% from $54,190 million a year earlier. | Alphabet Q2 2026 results, July 2026 |
| Microsoft's own Search advertising revenue, mostly Bing, was $15,176 million in fiscal 2026, up 9%. | Microsoft Form 10-K, fiscal 2026 |
| LinkedIn's B2B ad revenues reached $4.59 billion in 2025, up 9.0%, per EMARKETER, which separately puts US B2B digital ad spending at just over $20 billion. | EMARKETER, February 2026 |
| LinkedIn and Meta together account for nearly 85% of B2B social ad spending, per EMARKETER's September 2025 forecast. | EMARKETER, February 2026 |
EMARKETER's $4.59 billion is an analyst estimate, not a Microsoft disclosure, so label it as a model.
The scale gap explains the pricing gap. Google's auction spans almost every commercial query, so plumbers and lawyers set its prices as much as software vendors do. LinkedIn's auction is B2B from the first bid, so its prices look high against Google's average and ordinary against Google's B2B slice.
LinkedIn's side of that trade is a smaller room with a better guest list.
Who can you reach with LinkedIn Ads versus Google Ads?
LinkedIn claims more than 1.3 billion registered members in 2026, and its ad tools reached 1.20 billion members in January 2025 according to DataReportal, while Google handles 91.1% of worldwide searches (StatCounter, August 2026). One counts accounts that can see an ad, the other searches that can trigger one.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| LinkedIn states it has more than 1.3 billion members (registered accounts, not active users), $19.8 billion in annual revenue and 26% year-over-year growth in paid video ads. These are platform claims. | LinkedIn Pressroom, 2026 |
| LinkedIn ads could reach 1.20 billion members in January 2025, equal to 20.7% of adults aged 18 and over worldwide, up 176 million or 17.1% in a year. DataReportal notes that these are ad-tool reach figures, not active users. | DataReportal, March 2025 |
| 32% of US adults said they use LinkedIn in Pew's 2024 survey wave. Pew's 2025 wave left LinkedIn out, so this is the latest independent read. | Pew Research Center, fact sheet November 2025 |
| Google holds 91.1% of worldwide search engine market share and Bing 4.5% in August 2026. | StatCounter, August 2026 |
I left out LinkedIn's claimed share of members who drive business decisions, because no sample or method sits beside it.
Pew's 32% is the number I'd anchor on, though it's from 2024. A third of American adults is plenty for B2B, where the target list is a few thousand job titles. Google reaches nearly everyone, but only at the rare moment they search. LinkedIn reaches fewer people, all the time.
Timing is the real difference between the two channels.
How does the B2B buying journey change the LinkedIn vs Google comparison?
B2B buyers contact a seller only after 61% of their journey is done, and 77% end up buying from the first vendor they speak to, according to 6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report of nearly 4,000 responses. By the time a buyer searches the category on Google, the shortlist usually exists.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| Buyers make first contact with sellers 61% of the way through the buying journey in 2025, earlier than 69% in 2024. 77% of buyers say their first vendor conversation was with the eventual winner. | 6sense, 2025 |
| The average B2B buying cycle lasts 10.1 months in 2025, down from 11.3, and buyers consider 5.1 vendors on average. | 6sense, 2025 |
| Only 5% of B2B buyers are in market in a given quarter and 20% in a given year, if companies switch providers about every five years. Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute wrote the analysis for the LinkedIn B2B Institute in 2021. | Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, 2021 |
| The average time from a first LinkedIn ad impression to revenue is 281 days; from a first LinkedIn ad conversion it is 214 days. | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| LinkedIn-sourced leads reached sales-qualified opportunity in 24 days in the first quarter and 68 days in the fourth, under a 40/20/40 position-based attribution model. | HockeyStack Labs, December 2025 |
| Forrester predicted that more than half of B2B transactions of $1 million or more would go through digital self-serve channels in 2025. | Forrester, October 2024 |
The 95:5 analysis is five years old and LinkedIn's own research unit commissioned it, but you can check its arithmetic against your own renewal cycle.
This section settles the argument for me. Google Search harvests the 5% in market this quarter, and does it well. Only LinkedIn, of the two, puts a brand in front of the other 95% before the shortlist forms, and 6sense's 77% says the shortlist is where deals are won. A 281-day lag also means a LinkedIn test judged after one quarter is judged on the wrong data.
That lag shapes where B2B budgets are moving.
Where are B2B budgets moving between LinkedIn and search?
LinkedIn takes 41% of total B2B ad budgets among Dreamdata customers in 2025, while non-branded search fell from 37% to 33% of those budgets as its cost per click rose 29%.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| LinkedIn commands 41% of total B2B ad budgets, up 2% on the prior year as Dreamdata prints it, the largest single ad investment for its customers. | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| Non-branded search budgets dropped from 37% in 2024 to 33% in 2025; cost per click on those non-branded terms rose 29% and click-through rates fell 26%. Dreamdata links the fall to AI Overviews answering queries on the results page. | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| LinkedIn carried 69.6% of the $57.6 million of 2025 spend in Metadata's dataset and Google Ads 15.2%; 152 of the 153 advertisers ran LinkedIn and 65 ran Google Ads. | Metadata methodology, 2026 |
| 76% of B2B marketers name LinkedIn among the three most effective channels for thought leadership, and 25% plan to increase paid media investment in 2026, from a survey of 1,015 B2B marketers fielded June to August 2025. | Content Marketing Institute, October 2025 |
The B2B social media statistics page covers what LinkedIn does without a media budget behind it.
Both budget samples lean LinkedIn, so I read "41%" as what LinkedIn-committed B2B teams do, not the whole market. The non-branded search numbers tell me more: dearer clicks and falling click-through on generic queries make search pricier for exactly the discovery job LinkedIn does better.
The arithmetic behind the four computed numbers comes next.
How we calculated the original numbers
Four figures are computed here from the verified inputs above. Check the arithmetic or swap in your own.
- 0.96x: LinkedIn CPC against Google Ads CPC in one B2B dataset. Metadata's 2025 benchmark gives LinkedIn a spend-weighted $9.39 per click (138 advertisers) and Google Ads $9.76 (56 advertisers), inside the same pool of 153 B2B advertisers. 9.39 / 9.76 = 0.96. Metadata doesn't split Google Ads by campaign type, so the $9.76 may hold some display or Performance Max spend. Its open dataset shows 55 of the 56 Google advertisers ran text ads, the search format, at $9.57 a click: 9.39 / 9.57 = 0.98. So this compares LinkedIn with a search-dominated Google Ads mix, not with pure search. For contrast, Metadata's $9.39 divided by WordStream by LocaliQ's all-industry $5.42 gives 1.73, the "1.7x" figure, which compares a B2B-only sample with a mixed one from a different vendor. The Google Ads vs Facebook Ads statistics page hit the same two-sample problem with LocaliQ's benchmarks and explains its fix.
- 1.57x: Google Search cost per company influenced against LinkedIn. Dreamdata's 2026 report gives €110.37 per company influenced on Google Search and €70.11 on LinkedIn, from the same customer dataset, in euros, for 2025. 110.37 / 70.11 = 1.57. Dreamdata's public summary doesn't define "company influenced" or say how many customers are in the data. Put the other way, LinkedIn reaches a company for 36% less.
- 29 days: how long Google Search takes to earn LinkedIn's year. Alphabet reported $63,271 million of Google Search & other revenue for the quarter to 30 June 2026, a 91-day quarter, which is about $695 million a day. Microsoft reported $19,817 million of LinkedIn revenue for the fiscal year to 30 June 2026. 19,817 / 695.3 = 28.5 days, shown as 29. Two companies' filings over different periods, a quarter against a fiscal year, make this an illustration of scale. LinkedIn's figure also includes subscriptions and hiring products, so the advertising gap is wider.
- About $15 of revenue per LinkedIn member per year. $19,817 million of fiscal 2026 LinkedIn revenue divided by the 1.3 billion registered members LinkedIn claims gives $15.24. Registered members are accounts, not active users, and LinkedIn states the count as "1.3B+", so $15.24 is a ceiling per account. The revenue covers all four LinkedIn lines, Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Premium Subscriptions and Sales Solutions, so it isn't ad revenue per member.
What the 2026 LinkedIn Ads vs Google Ads statistics say
The CPC gap is mostly a sampling artefact, and a cost per click is not a verdict on a channel anyway. Inside one B2B dataset, LinkedIn and Google Ads clicks cost within 4% of each other. The 1.7x figure divides a B2B LinkedIn price by a Google average that includes dentists and locksmiths.
LinkedIn wins the middle of the funnel in the published data, and nobody publishes cost per customer for both. $202 against $524 per lead, €70.11 against €110.37 per company influenced, 121% against 67% ROAS. Those are strong same-source results from vendors whose customers lean LinkedIn. No source gives a same-source cost per opportunity for both channels, and Metadata's median advertisers get similar pipeline per dollar from each, so treat the pipeline case for LinkedIn as likely, not proven.
Google Search still owns the moment of intent, and it's getting more expensive to rent. Among Dreamdata customers, non-branded search clicks rose 29% in price as click-through fell 26%, and 6sense finds 77% of buyers purchase from the first vendor they contact. My read for 2027: fund branded and high-intent search to catch the 5% who are ready, and fund LinkedIn to be on the shortlist of the 95% who aren't yet. The argument worth having is about the split.
FAQ
Is LinkedIn Ads more expensive than Google Ads per click?
0.96x the Google price, computed from Metadata's 2025 dataset of 153 B2B advertisers: $9.39 per LinkedIn click against $9.76 per Google Ads click. The common "twice as expensive" claim divides a B2B LinkedIn price by Google's all-industry $5.42 average (WordStream by LocaliQ, June 2026).
What is the average LinkedIn Ads cost per lead in 2026?
$202 per lead, spend-weighted, across 138 B2B advertisers in Metadata's 2025 data, published 2026. The median advertiser pays $376. Google Ads B2B leads cost $524 in the same dataset.
Does LinkedIn or Google Ads deliver better ROAS for B2B?
121% ROAS for LinkedIn against 67% for Google Search, across Dreamdata customers in 2025 (March 2026), the one public dataset found that measures both. Dreamdata's customers lean on LinkedIn and its attribution model sits in the gated report, so read this as a customer-base result.
How much revenue does LinkedIn make from ads?
$19.8 billion in total LinkedIn revenue for fiscal 2026, up 11%, is the closest disclosed figure, from Microsoft's Form 10-K, and it includes subscriptions and hiring products. Microsoft doesn't break out advertising in dollars. EMARKETER estimates LinkedIn's B2B ad revenues at $4.59 billion for 2025, an analyst forecast.
Why is Google Ads cost per lead so high for B2B?
1.9% of Google Ads clicks become B2B leads against 5.9% on LinkedIn, at nearly the same click price, in Metadata's 2025 data. That lifts Google's B2B cost per lead to $524. Searchers often want pricing or a login page, not a gated form.
How long does LinkedIn Ads take to generate revenue?
281 days from first ad impression to revenue on average, and 214 days from first ad conversion, according to Dreamdata's March 2026 benchmark report. A one-quarter LinkedIn test therefore judges the channel before its revenue arrives. All figures on this page sit in the statistics hub with the other series.
Sources
- Metadata, B2B Advertising Benchmarks 2026 (2026, 2025 data)
- Metadata, Google Ads Cost for B2B (2026, 2025 data)
- Metadata, LinkedIn Ads Cost for B2B in 2026 (2026, 2025 data)
- Metadata, Benchmark Methodology (2026)
- Dreamdata, LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks Report 2026 (March 2026)
- WordStream by LocaliQ, Search Advertising Benchmarks (June 2026)
- HockeyStack Labs, 2025 LinkedIn Ads Benchmark Report for B2B Marketers (December 2025)
- Microsoft, Form 10-K for fiscal year 2026 (July 2026)
- Microsoft, FY26 Q4 earnings press release (July 2026)
- Microsoft, FY26 Q2 Productivity and Business Processes performance (January 2026)
- Alphabet, Second Quarter 2026 Results (July 2026)
- EMARKETER, FAQ on B2B marketing: what's shaping trends, buyers and expectations in 2026 (February 2026)
- LinkedIn Pressroom, About LinkedIn (2026)
- DataReportal, LinkedIn Users, Stats, Data and Trends (March 2025)
- Pew Research Center, Social Media Fact Sheet (November 2025)
- StatCounter, Search Engine Market Share Worldwide (August 2026)
- 6sense, 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report (2025)
- Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, 95% of B2B buyers are not in the market for your products (2021)
- Forrester, Predictions 2025: B2B Marketing and Sales (October 2024)
- Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content and Marketing Trends: Insights for 2026 (October 2025)
- Metadata, 2026 B2B benchmark dataset (JSON, CC BY 4.0) (2026, 2025 data)
Methodology. These LinkedIn Ads vs Google Ads statistics were collected in September 2026 and checked against the original publisher's filing, benchmark page or report, not against statistics roundups. Market-report resellers and stats farms were excluded. Benchmarks from Metadata, Dreamdata, HockeyStack and WordStream by LocaliQ are customer or advertiser samples, labelled in the sentence with their sample size, and are not platform-wide truth. LinkedIn's audience figures are platform claims and marked as such. Microsoft does not disclose LinkedIn advertising revenue in dollars, so none is stated as fact here. Ratios across two sources name both and say the populations differ. Last updated 24 September 2026.