Good Morning.
Someone on LinkedIn posted a poll this week asking "what's your biggest marketing challenge?" The top answer was "proving ROI." The second answer was "budget." Third was "alignment with sales." The fourth option was "all of the above" and won by a landslide. Peak B2B marketing discourse.
Now, let's get into today's Circuit. 🫡
In this Circuit:
🛠️ Operator Tip of the Week
📖 Fibbler's LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks - the numbers behind $200M in spend
📡 Across The Wire
🧪 What I'm Testing
🛠️ Operator Tip of the Week
If you're running LinkedIn Ads and measuring success by CTR alone, you're looking at the wrong scoreboard. Fibbler's data shows Document Ads have a 0.11% CTR (looks dead) but 5.20% engagement - 9x higher than Single Image. The format that looks broken in Campaign Manager might be doing the most work. Measure by the objective, not by the default metric.
📖 Fibbler benchmarked $200M+ in LinkedIn ad spend. Here's what actually matters.
1,000+ advertisers, $200M+ in spend, 4 billion impressions, August 2025 to July 2026. This is the most comprehensive LinkedIn Ads benchmark I've seen. Here are the five findings worth knowing.
1. Thought Leader Ads crush everything on cost
Thought Leader Ads: 1.35% CTR, $6.95 CPC, 1.84% engagement. Single Image: 0.38% CTR, $16.03 CPC, 0.59% engagement.
3.6x the clicks at less than half the cost. The format that looks like a personal post outperforms the format that looks like an ad. Not surprising when you think about it - people engage with people.
2. It costs $3.18 to reach an IC and $14.85 to reach a C-suite
CPC by seniority: Individual Contributor: $3.18. Manager: $5.62. Director: $8.40. VP/SVP: $11.20. C-suite: $14.85.
This is the pricing ladder nobody talks about. If your ICP is C-suite, your CPC is roughly 5x what it would be targeting ICs. Plan your budget accordingly - or target the people around the buyer instead of the buyer directly.
3. Lead Gen Forms convert 3-7x better than landing pages
Lead Gen Form click-to-lead: 6-15%. External landing page: 2-5%. Open-to-submit on forms: 70%+.
Less friction wins. The form auto-fills from their LinkedIn profile, so the conversion math is completely different from a landing page where they have to type everything.
4. 80% of advertisers beat 1x ROAS even at high spend
Under $10k/month: 82% above 1x ROAS, median 8.6x. Over $50k/month: 80% above 1x, median 3.8x.
The multiples drop as you scale (expected) but even the biggest spenders are mostly profitable. LinkedIn gets called "too expensive" constantly but the pipeline math still works for 4 out of 5 advertisers. Median ROAS across the board: 7.0x.
5. Australia/NZ is the sleeper market
ANZ: 0.51% CTR, $8.51 CPC - half the cost of North America at higher click rates. North America: 0.45% CTR, $17.80 CPC. Nordics: cheapest cost per company influenced at $6.45.
If your ICP exists outside North America, the unit economics are significantly better. Most B2B advertisers default to US targeting and ignore this.
🗳️ Poll
📡 Across The Wire
🧪 What I'm Testing
- Running Thought Leader Ads from a founder profile vs a company page
- Targeting Directors instead of C-suite to cut CPC by ~40%
- Lead Gen Forms vs external landing page A/B test
Written by Manuel Bourel, Founder @ Altus Revenue