B2B advertisers moved budget to Meta over two quarters: Meta's average share of paid budget rose from 20.8% to 24.9%, and the share of advertisers running Meta went from 54% to 63% (Primer, 2026). Most of that money came out of Google, whose average share fell from 43.6% to 40.9%.
Those figures come from Primer's study of 379 B2B advertisers' live ad accounts, observed spend rather than survey answers. We built our Channel Mix Benchmark on it, so a team can see its own Google, LinkedIn and Meta split next to advertisers who sell the same way.
Our read: Meta belongs in a B2B paid program as a lead channel. Fund it for leads, and set its target on leads you can confirm in your own data. The platform dashboard flatters Meta on cost, and a program that budgets off that number will overspend on it.
Should B2B companies advertise on Meta?
Yes, as a lead channel. B2B advertisers put 89% of their Meta spend on lead and sales objectives (Primer, 2026), and the leads hold up: for the same advertiser, Meta and Google website leads fit the ideal customer profile (ICP) at similar rates. Meta is also the platform most advertisers add second.
The usual objection to Meta in B2B is lead quality: the audience is broad, so the leads will not match the buyer. Primer tested that directly by comparing each advertiser with itself, which removes differences in company, ICP and currency. Meta's website leads matched the advertiser's ICP at about the same rate as Google's.
B2B teams already fund it that way. Awareness and traffic campaigns get tested widely and funded thinly, and the budget goes to leads and sales. Among companies with $1–10M in revenue, 59% run only one of Google, LinkedIn and Meta; above $50M, that drops to 22%, and Meta is most often the second platform added (Primer, 2026).
The budget is already moving. Where it moves depends on how a company sells.
How are B2B advertisers splitting paid budget across Google, LinkedIn and Meta?
By go-to-market motion. The typical ABM advertiser puts about 30% of paid budget on LinkedIn and close to nothing on Meta, a PLG advertiser puts 12% on LinkedIn and 6.5% on Meta, and a demand gen advertiser keeps a typical 62% on Google (Primer, 2026).
GTM motion | Typical paid mix | Meta movement over two quarters |
|---|---|---|
ABM (named account list) | ~30% on LinkedIn; median Meta allocation effectively zero | +5.4 points |
PLG (self-serve signup) | ~12% on LinkedIn, 6.5% on Meta | +5.5 points |
Demand gen (broad audience) | Google-concentrated, ~62% on Google | No comparable shift |
Primer computes each platform's median separately, so a row does not sum to 100. In a balanced panel of advertisers observed across both periods, Meta gained about 5.4 points among ABM advertisers and 5.5 among PLG advertisers, while Google declined in both. Demand gen advertisers and companies selling to security buyers did not show the same shift.
The typical ABM program still spends nothing on Meta, yet ABM advertisers moved about as much budget to Meta as PLG advertisers did, and they funded it out of Google. That fits how Primer's attribution data places Meta: it shows up earlier in converting journeys, and its credit rises about 1.6× when any touch counts instead of only the last one.
Primer found that go-to-market motion explains more of the difference in channel mix than the buyer a company sells to. The Channel Mix Benchmark compares your split with advertisers who share your motion and your buyer, which is the comparison to make.
How far to push Meta comes down to what a Meta lead actually costs.
Is Meta cheaper than Google for B2B leads?
On the platform dashboard, yes: Meta's reported cost per lead is about a quarter of Google's. On leads confirmed in the advertiser's own website data, Meta costs at least 1.4× more than Google, depending on the attribution model (Primer, 2026). LinkedIn is the most expensive under both measures.
The two numbers answer different questions. The dashboard counts what the platform credits to itself. The confirmed figure counts website leads that Primer could match back to a click, and it charges each platform only for the spend behind those leads. Meta's Instant Form leads are not in that data, so Primer removes an estimated 40% of Meta's lead-objective spend before computing its website cost per lead. That estimate is the softest part of the comparison, and Primer says so.
Meta leads cost more than Google leads once you confirm them, and they fit the ICP about as often. A higher price for leads of similar fit is a budgeting decision, and it has to be made on the confirmed figure: budgeted off the dashboard, Meta looks about four times cheaper than Google while its confirmed leads cost at least 1.4× more. It is the same gap between what a platform credits and what the business can confirm that we covered in why B2B marketing attribution is broken.
Set the target on the confirmed number.
How should a B2B team set a Meta target it can defend?
Set Meta's target on cost per confirmed website lead and on the share of those leads that fit your ICP. Primer's data puts Meta at least 1.4× Google on that basis with similar fit (Primer, 2026), so a target written against the dashboard cost per lead will be missed.
Start from what you can confirm. Track Meta's website leads through your CRM, check them against your ICP criteria, and follow them into pipeline before you scale spend. Instant Form leads need the same check, because they never touch your website and the platform is the only system counting them. Then price the channel against Google on the same basis, so the comparison in your budget review is between equals.
Meta also needs volume to work. The platform's delivery system rewards advertisers who give it many creative variations to test, which we covered in Andromeda's arrival. A B2B team that funds Meta for leads and runs a handful of static ads will see the learning stall before the leads arrive. Budget the creative alongside the media.
Where Meta fits in the overall plan is a budget structure question first. This is the work Moving Parade does for B2B teams: set the channel targets on confirmed pipeline, then run Google, LinkedIn and Meta against them.
One move: Enter your current Google, LinkedIn and Meta split in the Channel Mix Benchmark and compare it with advertisers who share your motion. If you run ABM or PLG and spend nothing on Meta, test it, with its target set on confirmed leads.
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