Key Takeaways
- LinkedIn’s influence now climbs deeper into the funnel, according to Dreamdata’s Steffan Hedebrandt, driving 30% of SQL sessions and 28% of new business sessions, so pausing campaigns once a lead is captured may be the wrong call.
- Folding LinkedIn engagement data into B2B marketing models deliver a 7.7x improvement in measured ROI accuracy, exposing how click-only attribution
The math on B2B paid media changed, and your old playbook can’t keep up. Non-branded Google Search CPCs jumped 29% while click-through rates dropped 26%, and you still have no guarantee who’s behind the query. That’s why budgets are moving.
LinkedIn now captures 41% of paid social spend, rewarded for the firmographic targeting Google can’t match. When you can reach your exact ICP by title, industry and company, the shift isn’t a trend. It’s a rational response to where efficiency actually lives.
The buying journey got longer and far more crowded. The average B2B deal now stretches 272 days, pulls in 10 stakeholders and racks up 88 touchpoints before it closes. Last-touch models and click-only tracking systematically undervalue the impressions, video views and comments that built the case long before the form fill. Your measurement model needs to catch up to how buyers actually buy.
Steffan Hedebrandt, CMO and co-founder of Dreamdata, has the data to prove it from their 2026 LinkedIn Ads B2B Benchmarks Report. In this Q&A, he breaks down three things every B2B marketer needs to hear: when to stop optimizing a dying channel and reallocate, using agreed cost-per-acquisition targets instead of gut feel; why LinkedIn is no longer just a top-of-funnel demand gen play. Its influence now rises deeper into the funnel, driving 30% of SQL sessions and 28% of new business sessions; and why folding LinkedIn engagement data into your model delivers a 7.7x improvement in measured ROI accuracy, and what you’re missing when you don’t.
Demand Gen Report (DGR): Steffan, thanks for talking with us today. What’s the biggest headline you see in how B2B marketing budgets are shifting across channels, especially with Google Network capturing 46% of budgets, LinkedIn taking 41% of paid social spend, and non-branded Google Search dropping four percentage points to 33%?
Steffan Hedebrandt: Thanks for having me. This comes down to how precise your targeting can be. LinkedIn offers many B2B specific targeting options, allowing marketers to reach their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) quite effectively.
Google doesn’t offer the same firmographic targeting. So, even if non-branded search on Google was considered the best option for harvesting demand for a long time, the CPC (cost-per-click) is up 29% and CTR (click-through-rates) are down 26% and there’s not guarantee who’s performing the search query and clicking on your ads.
The efficiency is changing, and with LinkedIn’s superior targeting advantages for B2Bs, the budget shifts are rational.
DGR: With non-branded Google Search CPCs rising 29% and CTRs falling 26%, while LinkedIn Ads show stronger efficiency and ROAS, what signals should marketers watch to decide when it’s time to reallocate budget rather than simply optimize within the same channel?
Hedebrandt: B2B marketing should always be about producing more revenue than what you spend on generating it with ads. So, for any given channel or platform where money is spent, marketers should be seeking to understand the return on investment.
The benchmarks that we are sharing from Dreamdata should be taken as inspiration for B2B Marketers to analyze their own budget deployment.
There’s always going to be an “it depends” situation and benchmarks are generalized data so what does not work for most companies might still work for yours. The key thing here is that you constantly, critically evaluate your ad spend and try to make the most of it.
Rethinking Media Budget as B2B Journeys Extend
DGR: How should marketers decide whether to keep optimizing a channel or reallocate budget elsewhere?
Hedebrandt: B2B Marketers should have agreed upon cost per acquisition targets in the business they operate within i.e. “what are we allowed to pay per demo call booked”?
With that target in hand they should rationally sift through their ad spend and evaluate it against the agreed target. Ads that are not meeting the target should be stopped and ads that are able to book relevant demo calls below the allowed cost should be scaled.
DGR: How should B2B marketers define “strong ROAS” today when platform-level numbers may not capture the full buying journey, especially as LinkedIn Ads ROAS rises while Google Search declines?
Hedebrandt: Relying on platform-level numbers alone can be misleading. Ad platforms have historically forced B2B Marketers to operate based on B2C metrics, but in B2B we are selling to companies. The in-platform metrics can’t capture that.
The CRM also has similar limitations. The “original source field” only studies the last session in which the conversion happens and attributes the journey to that. This makes no sense today where 81% of the buyer journey happens outside the sales pipeline
If your attribution window is 30 days and your average deal takes the better part of a year, you’re only measuring a fragment of the customer journey. When you do it right, LinkedIn ROAS, according to our data, comes out to a very strong 121%.
DGR: As B2B journeys stretch from 211 to 272 days, how should marketers rethink media performance and budget allocation across more touches, channels, and stakeholders?
Hedebrandt: What B2B Marketers often say is the most helpful outcome of having this benchmark data available is the support for creating better internal alignment. Meaning, if sales has a big target in Q4, that’s not when marketing should start their activities. Marketing should be planned quarters ahead of that to ensure enough time for activities to prosper into pipeline.
On top of the 272-day journey, the buying committee grew larger to 10 people per average deal, scrutinizing deals more and more. This means that our marketing activities should not stop when the demo call is booked. There’s still a long way to go to win the deal. Hence, we should think about expanding targeting to involve more people per account, organize webinars, produce podcasts and so forth to keep educating the account and support sales in winning the deal.
Interpreting LinkedIn’s Growing Role After MQL Stage
DGR: With 81% of the buying journey happening before pipeline while the sales pipeline and MQL-to-SQL windows are getting shorter, how should marketers adjust their pre-pipeline strategy to better influence deals before sales engagement begins?
Hedebrandt: The data gives marketers a powerful argument: 81% of the journey happens before sales enters the picture. That’s a mandate for doing even more marketing and content than ever before, as well as focusing more than ever on tracking the buyer journey better.
Buyers spend most of the journey researching, forming opinions, and building shortlists before sales ever enters the picture. And when they do, the buyer is informed and close to a decision.
With 88 touchpoints per deal, marketers should focus on creating content that earns trust before anyone raises their hand. If you wait for the hand-raise-intent-signal, you’re probably too late, and your buyer will have shortlisted your competition instead.
LinkedIn is particularly well-suited here because you can reach buying group members at the company level even when they haven’t self-identified.
DGR: How should B2B marketers interpret LinkedIn’s growing role after the MQL stage, with LinkedIn Ads driving 30% of SQL sessions and 28% of New Business sessions? What does that suggest about where it fits in the funnel?
Hedebrandt: It’s one of the most significant shifts in our benchmark report. A year ago in our 2024 benchmark, LinkedIn Ad influence declined as companies moved down the funnel: 30% at MQL, dropping to 28% at SQL and 15% at New Business. In 2025 it inverted: 24% at MQL, rising to 30% at SQL and 28% at New Business.
Software purchases are under more scrutiny than ever with the number of buyer stakeholders reaching 10 compared to 6.8 last year. When a buying committee spends 81% of their journey researching independently, you can’t afford to disappear once a lead is captured. You need to stay present across the entire buying journey.
LinkedIn isn’t just a demand gen channel anymore. It’s actively influencing buyers who are already in sales conversations. The practical implication is that pausing LinkedIn campaigns once a prospect enters the pipeline may just be the wrong call.
DGR: If including LinkedIn paid engagement data creates a 7.7x increase in measured ROI accuracy, what are marketers missing when they rely only on click-based attribution? How should that change their measurement model?
Hedebrandt: A click only captures the moment someone navigated somewhere. But it misses the far larger volume of impressions and engagements that shaped the buyer’s perception before they ever clicked anything. Not tracking that means you’re misattributing demand to the last visible touch while systematically undervaluing everything that built the case upstream.
The data that makes this concrete is that the time from first LinkedIn Ads engagement to revenue averages 212 days, while the time from first conversion averages 214 days. Two days apart. That near-identical timeline should challenge the core assumption that a form fill is a stronger intent signal than a video view or a comment. It’s not stronger. It’s just more visible in your current measurement setup.
Thinking About 2027 B2B Budget
DGR: How should marketers evaluate LinkedIn’s efficiency beyond total spend?
Hedebrandt: All ad spend should be about producing pipeline and revenue efficiently for your company.
This means in the case of LinkedIn you should not study whether clicks are expensive but instead start asking whether it’s efficiently influencing the companies you’re trying to close.
This advice applies to all ad spend.
DGR: As B2B marketers begin thinking about next year, what is the most important shift they should make in how they allocate budget, evaluate LinkedIn’s impact, and measure performance across a longer, more complex buying journey?
Hedebrandt: The most important shift is to move from optimizing for activity to measuring for revenue influence across the full 272 day journey. And to align with Sales about how much demand is needed and when, so you can start the marketing activities with enough runway for it to work.
That means multi-touch attribution that captures impressions and engagement, not just clicks and conversions. It means measuring at the company level, not the contact level. And it means challenging monthly reporting cycles that don’t match how B2B deals actually close.