Article Highlights:
- Chartis analyzed 2 years worth of LinkedIn B2B ads data and outperforms the industry average of 0.89% in 3 major industries (Finance, Manufacturing, and SaaS).
- Click Through Rate is highly dependent on industry and ad type.
- Studying benchmark data will help you evaluate your ad performance and communicate with key stakeholders on the ROI of LinkedIn Ads.
After analyzing two years' worth of data and hundreds of campaigns, the most common benchmark, besides Cost per Conversion (which varies heavily based on what your conversion is), was CTR - which can show how effective your ad is at driving people to do what you want them to do.
By benchmarking your LinkedIn Ads, you can assess whether your campaigns are performing in line with common industry expectations. In this article, we will look at averages to see what is considered a good LinkedIn CTR among a variety of campaign types and industries, to give you an idea of what you can expect from your LinkedIn Ads.
1. LinkedIn Ads Global Average CTR Benchmarks
We analyzed global CTR benchmarks for LinkedIn Ads to give you actionable data for you to compare your ad performance and share with interested stakeholders. Based on our findings, the following data represents the global average CTR for LinkedIn Ads Website Visits. Your own historical data will provide the most accurate benchmarks, but these may give you initial LinkedIn Ads performance benchmarks to aim for. Note that LinkedIn’s Expanded Audience Network was not used, nor was Audience Expansion..
2. LinkedIn Ads Website Visits Global Benchmarks
The average LinkedIn Ads CTR for all campaign types over multiple European, Asian, and North American countries blended across B2B industries is 0.89% for Chartis Clients.
Compared to the CTR averages posted by others in the LinkedIn marketing space for reference:
- Chartis Client’s Avg. CTR: 0.89%
- B2BHouse Avg. CTR: 0.44%-0.65%
- B2Linked Avg. CTR: 0.44%
- Poweredbysearch Avg. CTR: 0.44%-0.65%
- LinkedIn Avg. CTR: 0.14%-2.02%
Chartis clients typically saw a higher CTR when compared to the global trend average.
3. LinkedIn Ads CTR Global Benchmarks by Campaign Objective
Next, we can see LinkedIn Ads CTR global benchmarks broken down by campaign objective.
Different campaign objectives will yield different results for CTR - as each campaign is focused on measuring a different action:
- Website Visits: Clicks through to the website
- Lead Generation: Filling out an in-platform form
- Video Views: Watch the in-platform video
- Brand Awareness: Impressions
- Engagement: Likes, comments, shares, and clicks to the website
- Website Conversions: Focusing on those likely to complete an action on your website
- Website Visits Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.89%
- Lead Generation Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.58%
- Engagement Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.18%
- Website Conversions Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.52%
- Video Views Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.23%
By understanding LinkedIn Ad CTR benchmarks by campaign type, you can evaluate the effectiveness of different campaign strategies, allocate budget more efficiently, and make informed decisions about when to optimize campaigns and what KPIs to aim for. Below, we offer a more detailed analysis broken down by industry and campaign objective, with key insights we found to improve performance.
4. LinkedIn Ads CTR Benchmark Study:
This study explores LinkedIn ad performance across three key B2B sectors: finance, SaaS, and manufacturing. Data was pulled from Jan 2023 to September 2024 (LinkedIn has gone through many ad changes over this time, as well as being past the COVID data anomalies, which has made ad data prior to 2023 less relevant to today).
Over 100 campaigns were run across several businesses with multiple hundreds of millions of dollars in AAR per company. Campaigns were run across North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
The data focuses on various campaign types, focusing on the objective type while analyzing average click-through rates (CTR). The goal is to provide insights into how different industries and campaign types perform on LinkedIn, helping other marketers optimize & gauge their ad strategies.
CTR for Image Ads have reviously been shared by LinkedIn experts to have an average of around 0.44%-0.65% (https://www.theb2bhouse.com/linkedin-ad-benchmarks/) (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-ad-benchmarks-aj-wilcox/) but this depends heavily on industry, target audience, language, and location. These metrics were different from our findings over the last two years.
The following are outlines for different campaign formatting and their recommended goals and objectives, which also are major factors in affecting KPIs:
From our research both internally and externally, most clients use the following ad formats:
- Single Image Ad
- Video Ad
- Document Ad
These are then most often paired with the following LinkedIn objectives:
- Website Visit
- Video Views
- Website Conversions
- Lead Generation
The following are breakdowns of the benchmarks we found by industry.
LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks by Industry:
Chartis Finance & Banking Sector LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks
Website Visits Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.88%
Website visit campaigns are focused on getting clicks and people to your website, because of that this typically has the highest CTR of any other campaign type. The CTR average is right around our global average, and above prior averages posted by others. Informational videos and image ads with unique insights into niche financial markets were the most clicked through content, leading to website visits and conversions.
Chartis B2B SaaS Sector LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks
Website Visits Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.93%
The tech-focused audience may have been more online-savvy, active on LinkedIn, and therefore more willing to click through than other audiences. Image ads had the best CTR for these clients.
Website Conversions Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.59%
When focusing on website conversions, CTR is expected to be lower than a website visits campaign, as the main metric is typically cost per conversion and conversion rate. However, CTR is still useful in tracking how well different ads perform - and these typically saw a higher than other’s average CTR and also mainly used image ads.
Video Views Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.30%
Video view campaigns are focused on, you guessed it, video views - so they also saw lower CTR than website visit campaigns. Being able to compare ads between each other is important, and CTR can assist with that. Shorter videos (under 30 seconds) seemed to perform best in both video metrics and in CTR.
Though not as good at generating high CTR, video view campaigns are great at awareness and retargeting for audience building.
B2B Manufacturing Sector LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks
Website Visits Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.81%
When focused on the right messaging, image ads performed the best and saw an average close to that of others within our study. Varying text placement within the image depending on the focus helped increase CTR.
Lead Generation Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.52%
Since the goal was an in platform form submission and not a click, LinkedIn focused its efforts on finding those most likely to form fill, leading to a slightly lower CTR than our global average. Keeping the form simplified with only critical information needed by sales allowed both CTR and Conversion Rates to increase.
Engagement Campaigns: Average CTR: 0.18%
These campaigns were primarily various forms of boosted posts - ranging from content boosts, PR updates, trade show announcements, product updates, or general company updates. Clear calls to action and links to sites were not always present, nor the main focus, so CTR was generally lower than our global average and the prior averages posted by others. When campaigns focused on clear calls-to-action, those campaigns tended to perform better with their CTR.
Takeaways & Next Steps
After running campaigns for a long time with enough budget, make sure to graduate from industry benchmarks to your own data as a benchmark. This will yield far more relevant results for your teams and allow you to have a good standard to work from. These benchmarks above are good to give yourself a starting point from, but as we mention several times, CTR varies heavily based on several factors and so should be studied carefully.
Like other channels and platforms, LinkedIn’s performance hinges on iterative testing to continually refine and improve results. It’s important to remember that performance will vary based on several factors, including audience specificity, ad quality, landing page experience, messaging, value proposition, and budget. At our agency, we go beyond platform-level metrics, ensuring that LinkedIn and all channels are strategically leveraged to achieve measurable business outcomes that align with our clients’ goals. By taking a data-driven and holistic approach, we help our clients consistently exceed industry benchmarks and drive meaningful results.