Do LinkedIn ads work for small UK businesses?

LinkedIn ads statistics for UK small businesses, October 2026

Small and mid-sized UK companies keep telling us that LinkedIn ads don't work for companies their size, so they either don't advertise there, or have written the channel off after trying. For this issue of PacedRevenue's Off-Pace Report, we ran a sample of 5,598 UK B2B companies with 21 to 100 staff, drawn from Apollo's company database¹, against LinkedIn's public Ad Library², identified those that had advertised in the last 12 months, then followed the visible footprints of their ads to look for setup reasons the channel may not have worked for them. Here are the numbers:

1. 26% of the UK B2B companies with 21 to 100 staff in our sample ran LinkedIn ads in the past year (1,204 of the 4,719 with a definite answer in LinkedIn's Ad Library).
2. Between 40% and 47% of those advertisers had stopped by October 2026 (487 to 563 of 1,204), with no new ad in the 90 days before the count. The range is the 76 whose activity couldn't be called either way.
3. 53% of the companies that stopped ran three ads or fewer in a whole year (257 of 487), when LinkedIn recommends four or five in each campaign, and 29% ran a single ad. More than half the companies still advertising ran 25 or more (275 of 528).
4. Two in three of the companies that stopped did so within two months (88 of the 129 whose impressions LinkedIn dates), and the median ran 26 days.
5. 13% of the companies that stopped did so within a week (17 of the 129 whose impressions LinkedIn dates), shorter than the minimum campaign schedule of seven days that LinkedIn's help sets out.
6. 26% of active advertisers had no LinkedIn Insight Tag on their website (152 of the 580 whose websites could be tested).
7. 65% of advertisers whose targeting LinkedIn shows used no matched audience in those ads (278 of 429), and 41% excluded nobody at all.
8. Advertisers whose ads an agency paid for lacked the Insight Tag as often as those that paid themselves (37% against 33%).
9. In the sample, software firms were four times as likely as construction firms to advertise on LinkedIn (57% against 14%).

Do LinkedIn ads work for small businesses?

Four decisions determine whether a channel works for an advertiser: message-market fit, the journey from the ad to the conversion, the execution of the campaign itself, and the budget. The first two and the fourth are unobservable from public metadata, and so are returns. So this report focuses on the third, the campaign setup mistakes that may explain why the channel underperformed.

Half the 487 companies that had stopped ran fewer ads in a whole year than LinkedIn recommends for a single campaign.

LinkedIn recommends four or five ads in each campaign³. 257 of the 487 companies that stopped (53%) ran three or fewer across the whole year, so none of their campaigns could have met it. If the 76 advertisers that couldn't be called had all stopped too, the share would be 46%.

PacedRevenue's own view is that a test needs at least two months. By that yardstick, 68% of the stopped companies whose impressions LinkedIn dates fell short (88 of 129). 36% fell short on both counts (46 of 129).

The median company that stopped ran for 26 days. 54% stopped within a month, and 74% within 90 days. The 129 that LinkedIn dates ran more ads than the rest (median 4 against 2), so if anything they understate how fast the others quit.

A quarter ran for more than 90 days and stopped anyway (33 of 129). The Ad Library can't show why. Following those companies is what later issues are for.

Why this matters: if you tried a handful of ads and saw nothing, you have the same evidence as half the companies that stopped: not enough to say either way.

How long should you run LinkedIn ads before judging them?

PacedRevenue recommends running LinkedIn ads for at least two months before deciding whether to kill the channel. LinkedIn's guidance covers when to change a campaign rather than when to judge the channel: it recommends a campaign runs seven days before it is changed⁴, and its API documentation says a campaign optimised for qualified leads needs “a two-week learning phase for peak performance”⁵.

1 in 3 of the companies that stopped did so within two weeks, and 13% within a week.

Two months can't show revenue: Dreamdata measured an average of 281 days from a B2B buyer's first LinkedIn ad impression to revenue⁶. What two months can show is whether the ads are doing their own job: getting someone who fits your customer profile to raise a hand, with an enquiry, a demo request or a reply. Judge the test on those hands, and on how many come from the companies you want to win. The revenue comes months later. That is why switching the channel off after a quiet month proves so little.

Why aren't my LinkedIn ads working?

The Off-Pace Report (October 2026) found four setup gaps that show from outside a company's account: too few ads, no Insight Tag, no audience list and stale ads. Under each one below, LinkedIn's own recommendation sits beside what we found.

Too few ads to learn from

The median company that stopped ran 3 ads in the whole year, and 29% ran just one. LinkedIn recommends four or five in each campaign³, and PPC Land reports LinkedIn data showing that campaigns running five or more get click-through rates more than 20% higher than campaigns running one⁷.

Ads seen in the Ad Library over the past year. Companies with more than 25 ads are seen through a sample of 25, so they can't be called stopped. Among companies that ran the same number of ads, those that stopped were no more likely to lack a tag than those still advertising (2 to 4 ads: 52% against 48%; 5 to 9 ads: 38% against 53%; 10 to 24 ads: 16% against 21%). The missing tag goes with how little a company ran, not with stopping on its own.

Part of this pattern is mechanical. A company that ran a single ad in a year would show no new ad in the last 90 days about three times in four even if nothing had changed, so the figure shows how little these companies ran, not why they stopped.

No LinkedIn Insight Tag on the website

26% of active advertisers had no LinkedIn Insight Tag on their website, or one that never loads (152 of 580). LinkedIn's documentation says “adding the tag to the global footer will let you track conversions or re-target on any page across your whole site”⁸, and recommends sending conversions through both the tag and the Conversions API⁵.

We loaded each homepage and one more page in a fresh browser, accepted the cookie banner and blocked every request to LinkedIn. A site counts as missing the tag only when two separate checks agree and neither the page source nor any Google Tag Manager container holds LinkedIn's code. A company that sends conversions only through the Conversions API, or uses only LinkedIn's own lead forms, would show as missing.

The tag was checked on today's websites, so we also read the Internet Archive's copies of the stopped advertisers' homepages from while they were advertising⁹. Allowing for the tags the archive can't see, about 6% of those with no tag today had one while they advertised, so for most of the rest the tag was likely missing while their ads ran.

Why this matters: LinkedIn sees the click and nothing after it, unless the lead comes through its own form or the Conversions API. At £3,000 a month, the least we recommend spending, that's £36,000 a year without knowing which ad produced a demo. Asking every lead how they heard about you recovers part of the picture.

No audience list, and nobody excluded

65% of the advertisers whose targeting LinkedIn shows used no matched audience in those ads (278 of 429), and 41% excluded nobody at all (176 of 429). LinkedIn recommends excluding existing customers from prospecting campaigns¹⁰, and a matched audience needs at least 300 members to run⁵.

Why this matters: without a list, ads go to everyone who matches the job titles and industries chosen, including your own customers and competitors, and LinkedIn's audience expansion can widen that further.

The same ads left running for months

10% of advertisers live in the last 30 days were still running an ad first shown more than six months earlier (17 of the 178 whose impressions LinkedIn shows). LinkedIn advises rotating in new creative at least once a month, because click-through falls when the same ad runs week after week¹¹. That decline is creative fatigue, and the defence is a queue of new ads ready to go.

All four gaps are campaign execution, the third of the four decisions above. For what to check beyond it, read why paid ads stop working.

How many UK businesses advertise on LinkedIn?

No public figure counts every UK business on LinkedIn ads. In our sample, 26% of UK B2B companies with 21 to 100 staff ran LinkedIn ads in the past year (1,204 of 4,719). The share depends far more on industry than on size¹². In our sample, software firms are four times as likely as construction firms to advertise on LinkedIn. Among industries with 20 or more advertisers, the share that stopped runs from 29% in research and development to 52% in wholesale and retail.

Why this matters: if you run a manufacturing business, 4 in 5 manufacturers in our sample ran no LinkedIn ads in the past year, and nearly half those that did have stopped.

By company size

Do agency-run accounts do better?

Not on the basics. The Ad Library names who paid for each ad, and an agency or partner paid for the ads of 19% of advertisers. Who pays isn't always who runs the account, but an agency on the invoice didn't bring the tracking tag with it. If you're choosing a LinkedIn marketing agency, ask what it will track.

Which ad formats they use

Where the impressions went

81% of the 4,549 ads these UK companies ran beyond the UK got under half their impressions in the UK. The median ad shown beyond the UK got 9% of its impressions there. LinkedIn publishes this split only for ads that also ran in the EU, so it covers the 429 advertisers whose ads reached beyond the UK.

Why this matters: if your ads reach beyond the UK, check the locations in Campaign Manager. LinkedIn shows this split only for ads that ran in the EU, so the figure can't say whether the spread was chosen or accidental.

Are LinkedIn ads worth it for a small business?

LinkedIn ads are worth it for a small business when the customers they win are worth more than it costs to win them, and only your own deal size, cost per lead and close rate can show that.

A fair test, from LinkedIn's guidance and our own view, looks like this:

1. 1

   Run for at least two months before judging the channel. (Our view.)

2. 2

   Spend at least £3,000 a month. That's where we see campaigns produce consistent, weekly leads for deal sizes over £12,000 a year. (Our view.)

3. 3

   Run four or five ads in each campaign, and replace the weakest one every month. (LinkedIn.)

4. 4

   Put the Insight Tag in your site's global footer, and send conversions through the Conversions API too. (LinkedIn.)

5. 5

   Exclude your customers (LinkedIn), and target a list of the companies you want to win (our view).

A test that meets all five tells you whether LinkedIn ads are worth it for your business. A test that misses them tells you only that it was too small.

To check the sum before you start, LinkedIn ads for B2B sets the cost per lead you can afford against your deal size.

Methodology

We drew the companies from Apollo's company database by headcount (UK, 21 to 100 staff) and screened each one by hand as selling to businesses, with the UK as a core market. The sample is not every UK company of that size, so every share on this page describes the sample. We left out agencies, recruiters, charities, public bodies and investors, and any company that had advertised a paid-media or demand-generation job in the previous six months, because those companies are building the skill in-house.

4,719 companies gave a definite Ad Library answer. Another 879 matched other companies' names only, so they sit outside every figure. An ad stays in the library for about a year after it last runs, which is what "the past 12 months" means here.

LinkedIn dates only the ads that also ran in the EU, so we date the rest from their IDs, which rise over time. An advertiser is new when its oldest ad was first shown in the 90 days before we looked, and stopped when it had no new ad and no impression in those 90 days.

For the 358 stopped advertisers whose ads ran only in the UK, LinkedIn shows no impressions, so for them stopped means no new ad in 90 days. Among the 143 advertisers with no new ad whose impressions we can see, 10% were still running an older one.

Companies with more than 25 ads are seen through a sample of 25, which can hide a recent ad. The 76 whose sample shows no recent activity are counted as unclear rather than stopped, so the share that stopped sits between 40% and 47%.

The tag check reads each website as it is today, so a company that stopped might have removed the tag afterwards. To test that, we read the Internet Archive's copy of each stopped advertiser's homepage from while it was advertising. The archive shows the tag for 30% of the companies that still have it, because tags loaded through a tag manager are rarely archived, and for 2% of those with no tag today (3 of 164). Allowing for what the archive misses, about 6% of the stopped companies with no tag today had one while they advertised.

Every figure carries the number of companies behind it. Nothing is published on fewer than 20 companies, and no company is ever named. The definitions are version v1, fixed so that issues compare. The report is published every quarter, so each issue's 90-day window follows on from the last.

With these sample sizes, a percentage carries a 95% margin of error of about 3 points on 1,204 advertisers, about 4 points on 487 stopped advertisers, and about 9 points on the 129 whose impressions LinkedIn dates. The archive estimate of removed tags is the least certain figure here: it could be anywhere from about 1% to 18%.

PacedRevenue manages LinkedIn ads for B2B companies. The two-month minimum and the £3,000 monthly budget on this page are our view from the campaigns we run for clients, and the page labels them as ours. Every other figure is a count, except two that rest on estimates: the dates of UK-only ads, worked out from their IDs, and the share of tags removed after a company stopped advertising.

What every issue tracks

Every quarter, the Off-Pace Report publishes these LinkedIn ads statistics for UK SMEs on the same definitions, with the change since the last issue.

The data, and the credit

Every advertising figure in this report starts in LinkedIn's Ad Library, which LinkedIn makes public so that anyone can see who is advertising and what they are running.

For ads shown in the EU, LinkedIn also publishes who each ad targeted, how many people saw it and when it ran. That openness is what let us count 1,204 advertisers and read their targeting.

The figures are PacedRevenue's analysis of that public data, counted in aggregate, with no member data and no company named. This report is not affiliated with or endorsed by LinkedIn. LinkedIn® is a registered trademark of LinkedIn Corporation.

You're free to reuse any figure in this report, in an article, a deck or a post, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Credit The Off-Pace Report by PacedRevenue and link to this page.