What LinkedIn
ads cost.

LinkedIn's budget page says the minimum daily budget to start is $10, for any ad format, and the minimum lifetime budget for a new campaign is $100. Once a lifetime campaign launches, the minimum becomes $10 a day multiplied by the days scheduled.

It suggests $25 a day for new advertisers and $50 to $100 for existing ones, and says the defaults in other currencies are 'the equivalent of $25'. That framing reads as US dollars. LinkedIn's API also works out minimums for the account's currency and the campaign's settings, so the number Campaign Manager shows you is the one that counts.

For lifetime budgets, LinkedIn says its pacing predicts activity over a week and spreads spend to match. Expect daily spend to wobble around the budget rather than hit it exactly.

LinkedIn offers three bidding strategies. Maximum delivery lets LinkedIn bid automatically to spend the budget and get the most results. Cost cap sets a limit on the average cost per result. Manual bidding sets the most you'll pay for each result you've chosen.

What you're actually charged for depends on the campaign's optimisation goal and the bid strategy together. Depending on those, it can be per 1,000 impressions, per click, or another result.

During setup, Campaign Manager gives real-time suggestions on competitive bids for the audience you've built. That's the most honest benchmark you'll get, because it's for your audience, today.

LinkedIn's 2020 explainer describes an auction where the winner is judged on the bid and a relevance score based on how likely people are to respond. It's a second-price style auction: in LinkedIn's example, a $1.40 bid that beats a $1.00 bid pays $1.01, not $1.40.

Two things follow. Bidding higher than you need doesn't usually cost you the full bid, so very low manual bids mostly just lose. And an ad people respond to wins more often for the same money.

LinkedIn clicks usually cost more than clicks on Meta. You're paying for the targeting: job title, seniority, company and industry, which other platforms can't match. B2B advertisers chasing the same decision-makers bid against each other, and the audiences are small.

Whether it's worth it comes down to what a customer is worth. Selling a $40 product, it rarely adds up. Selling a contract worth tens of thousands, a dear click can still be the cheapest way to reach the right ten people.

So don't compare LinkedIn's cost per click with Google's or Meta's. Compare cost per qualified lead, and what those leads turn into over the buying cycle.

When your campaign lets you choose, the cheaper option depends on your click rate. Paying per 1,000 views wins once enough people click. Below that point, paying per click is cheaper.

Put in the bids LinkedIn suggests for your own audience, and the click rate you expect. The starting numbers are made up to show the maths.

Start from the audience, not the minimum. A budget that reaches your audience once is too thin to be remembered. The audience checker on the B2B LinkedIn page shows whether your audience is the right size, and the B2B budget page works backwards from the revenue you need.

Then give it time. B2B buying cycles run for months, so judge LinkedIn on the pipeline it adds over a quarter, not the leads it brings in week one.

And track it properly. A lead form that sends contacts into your CRM, with the deal value recorded later, is what tells you whether the dear clicks paid.