LinkedIn’s head of ads measurement told Digiday something every marketer should probably print out and frame: “Clicks don’t pay the bills. Pipeline quality does.”
A Cost Per Mille (CPM) is the price an advertiser pays for 1000 impressions. Marketers tend to panic when they see LinkedIn’s average CPM of ~$23 (as reported by Digiday) because it sits so far above the ~$5 averages on other social platforms like Meta and TikTok. That $5 CPM feels comfortable and easier to defend in a budget meeting.
The problem is that CPM only tells you the cost of showing an ad. It says nothing about whether the right person actually saw it. And for any campaign that relies on business decision-makers, low-cost traffic will look good on paper but won’t move you closer to your goals. Comparing LinkedIn to TikTok is a bit like comparing a trade-show booth to a mall kiosk. Yes, one costs more, but it also puts you in front of people who can move a six-figure deal forward. The audiences and the stakes are completely different, and the price reflects that.
So let’s break down when LinkedIn’s higher CPM is a smart investment, when it’s not, and how to determine if it’s the platform that will actually fill your pipeline.
Don’t Measure $50K Deals Against a $5 CPM
People love comparing CPMs side by side, but it rarely tells the whole story. Meta and TikTok are built to reach everyone in the room while LinkedIn is built to reach the people at the table who can actually say yes. So of course the price tag will be different.
Platforms like Meta, YouTube, and TikTok work well when you need broad reach and when the actions you want people to take are simple. These channels meet people in everyday moments and are great for getting your message in front of a large audience quickly. They also support low-commitment steps like small purchases or event signups, and they tend to be most effective early in someone’s customer journey. If your goal is to grow the top of your funnel, these channels usually give you more scale for your budget.
LinkedIn plays in a different category. It focuses on who people are at work and how much decision-making power they have. That matters in high-stakes sales where you need to reach people with authority, often at the director or executive level. It also matters for recruitment, where you are trying to connect with people who have the right experience, skills, and industry background. LinkedIn lets you focus your reach on the candidates who actually fit the role, instead of casting a wide net and hoping the right people apply.
The Price Is Right (When You’re Reaching the Right People)
People are not on LinkedIn to scroll endlessly, and that naturally limits how many ads can be shown. While some groups—like recruiters, sales teams, or job seekers—open LinkedIn constantly, most professionals check it far less often than platforms like Meta or TikTok. As one media buyer in the Digiday article explains, “LinkedIn may have over a billion users, but they’re not opening the app every half an hour like they might be with Meta or TikTok. Feed time is lower, ad inventory is more limited and supply is therefore tighter.” Less inventory with higher demand will always push prices up.
The audience itself also plays a big role in the cost of LinkedIn ads. The platform is full of professionals who influence business decisions. Once you start targeting specific roles, seniority levels, or niche industries, the audience gets small very quickly, which increases competition. A campaign aimed at directors in cybersecurity or facilities managers in higher education will naturally cost more because there are fewer people who fit that profile. LinkedIn ads will cost more because you are paying for some of the most precise professional targeting available on a social platform.
Is LinkedIn The One or Is It Time to See Other Platforms?
The easiest way to know if LinkedIn is the right place to invest is to look at who you need to reach. For example, if you are selling concert tickets, Meta makes more sense because it reaches broad local audiences in their day-to-day scroll. Or if you want to get prospective undergraduates curious about campus life, platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat tend to be a better match because teenagers discover schools through visual storytelling, peer content, and short-form video.
But if you need to reach CFOs weighing new accounting software or directors planning capital upgrades, LinkedIn is the place where you can reliably find them. These platforms may compete for attention and ad dollars, but they are designed for different kinds of decisions, which is why they rarely serve the same purpose.
LinkedIn is worth testing when your audience is:
- defined by job title, industry, certifications, or technical expertise
- working in sectors with long sales cycles, like B2B, higher education, STEM, and professional services
- niche or specialized in their field
- senior, director, or executive level
- connected to high-budget or high-consideration decisions
- not easily identified through consumer interests or entertainment behavior
If what you are offering is low consideration and requires fast, high-volume results, then LinkedIn will probably not give you what you need. There is no single “best” platform. Each one is built for a different environment and a different kind of decision. The key is choosing the space where your audience actually is and where your message has the best chance of landing.
Money Well Spent or Just… Spent?
Once you decide to invest in LinkedIn, staring at CPM alone is just going to give you heartburn. It will almost always be higher than what you see on other platforms. The real question is whether LinkedIn is helping you reach the right people and generate real opportunities. A $20 CPM that drives three qualified conversations is far more efficient than a $5 CPM that brings in hundreds of “leads” who were never going to convert.
Here are the things you should pay attention to and what they tell you:
- Cost per click compared to traffic quality: Instead of asking how cheap a click is, look at who is actually clicking. Fewer clicks from the right people are more valuable than lots of clicks from the wrong ones.
- Lead quality: Check the job titles, seniority levels, industries, and experience of the people filling out your forms. Are they the kinds of people who would realistically buy or enroll or hire you?
- Meeting requests: A booked conversation is a much stronger signal than a click. It tells you the channel is getting the right people in the door.
- Sales feedback: Ask the people talking to your leads. They know very quickly if those leads feel qualified or totally off the mark.
- How people move through the pipeline: LinkedIn does not always get the final click, but it often plays a role earlier in the process. This is especially important because LinkedIn’s historical attribution model has relied heavily on last-click or rule-based credit—something LinkedIn itself acknowledged in a recent overview of their improved attribution approach. Last-click models tend to over-credit low-funnel channels and undercount the influence LinkedIn has earlier in the journey.
- Revenue over time: If the deals you close from LinkedIn are higher quality or higher value, a higher CPM becomes worth it. Good revenue makes expensive traffic cheap.
Don’t Let CPM Fool You
A high CPM is not bad, and a low CPM is not automatically good. What matters is whether the right people are taking meaningful steps toward becoming customers. Sometimes the most cost-effective choice is the one with the higher upfront investment. If you want help figuring out which platform actually fits your goals and your audience, get in touch.