Paid Growth Tools · LinkedIn Ads
Budget planning

LinkedIn Ads Budget Calculator

Plan each campaign type at the reach and frequency it can actually afford, then check what the account adds up to against your penetration goal.
per line: ICP × reach × frequency ÷ 1000 × CPM

Account target

What the whole account should achieve, across every campaign.

Target audience size in Campaign Manager, the full ICP.
60%
Share of the ICP you want to reach at least once in a month, across all campaigns combined. Do not aim for 100%: a large part of any audience is not active on the platform in a given month, so no budget can reach them.
8×
Average times each reached person should see you per month, across all campaigns.
Total monthly media budget
€8,445
Across 3 campaign lines
People reached
32,000
64% of the ICP
Impressions
270,000
per month, all lines
Blended CPM
€31
across 3 lines
Cost per person reached
€0.26
per month

Against your account goal

Reach and frequency are account-level outcomes. Individual lines do not have to hit them, the combination does.

Audience penetration 64%
32,000 of 50,000 people · goal 60%On target
Average frequency 8.4×
270,000 impressions over 32,000 people · goal 8×On target

Campaign lines

Each line gets its own reach and frequency, because what an engagement campaign can afford to do is not what a website-visits campaign can afford to do. Cold lines add new reach. Retargeting lines add frequency to people already reached.

Campaign line Layer CPM Reach % Freq Impressions Monthly cost % of budget
All campaigns 64% reached €31 8.4× 270,000 €8,445 100%

How the account rolls up

Per line the maths is simple. The account-level numbers are where the assumptions live.

StepResult
Cold lines combined, allowing for overlap64% of ICP
× ICP size → unique people reached32,000 people
Impressions summed across all lines270,000
÷ people reached → account frequency8.4×
Line costs summed → total monthly budget€8,445
Read this as a planning number, not a quote.
  • The CPMs assume Manual Bidding, which is how we run accounts. Maximum Delivery hands price control back to the auction and normally clears higher, so a Max Delivery plan will cost more than this.
  • You will not reach 100% of an audience, whatever the budget says. A large share of any ICP is not active on the platform in a given month, and LinkedIn can only serve people it can actually deliver an impression to. The last slice is always the most expensive, which is why a 60% goal is realistic and 100% is not.
  • Cold lines are combined as independent overlapping audiences: 1 minus the product of everything each line misses. Two cold lines at 20% and 55% land at 64%, not 75%, because they hit some of the same people.
  • Retargeting reach is capped at the cold reach, since you cannot retarget someone you never reached. A capped line is flagged in the table.
  • The CPMs are rounded starting values, not a forecast. Replace them with the numbers from your own account.
  • Engagement-objective thought leadership sits at the expensive end, so it buys a narrow slice of reach at low frequency. Website visits against a tight account list carries the penetration. That division of labour is the whole point of splitting reach and frequency per line.
  • Retargeting is not the cheap layer. Warm audiences are small, so they tend to clear at a higher CPM than a well-targeted cold campaign. It earns its place on frequency, not on price.