Most paid programmes treat scale and cost as a trade-off. Ours didn’t: blended cost per opportunity fell 84% and pipeline ROAS nearly doubled, while pipeline scaled at the same time. The reason isn’t a cheaper click — it’s a data model that ties every pound of media to revenue, so the decisions that grow pipeline also cut its cost.
The numbers most agencies won’t show you are their own. So we published ours — five years of paid-media performance across every account we run, cost per lead through to pipeline and win rate, on one public page. One line stands out: blended cost per opportunity fell from £9,867 in 2022 to £1,573 in 2026 year-to-date — an 84% drop, after reaching a five-year low of £1,365 in 2025 — over exactly the period we scaled pipeline hardest.
That combination isn’t supposed to happen. Growth and efficiency are meant to trade off: to scale you spend into colder, costlier audiences; to stay efficient you retreat to the cheap, in-market bottom of the funnel. They only stop competing when your data model can see revenue. Once every pound of media is measured against pipeline — not clicks, not leads — the accurate decision and the efficient decision become the same decision. That is the whole of our point of view, and five years of our own money is the test of it.
Why we didn’t have to choose
A number that falls 84% while pipeline grows — and return on ad spend nearly doubles — isn’t luck, and it isn’t a cheaper auction. It’s what happens when four levers pull in the same direction, each one made possible by measuring media against revenue rather than clicks or leads:
- A data model wired to revenue. Every pound is measured against pipeline and closed revenue, not clicks or leads. Accurate feedback means the decision that grows pipeline and the decision that cuts cost are usually the same one.
- A diversified channel mix. We expanded beyond bottom-of-funnel capture into demand creation and brand. Widening the funnel didn’t just lift growth — it found efficiency, feeding warmer, cheaper demand into the channels that convert.
- Capital discipline. Budget followed returns. Spend concentrated where the model showed real pipeline and pulled back where it didn’t — investing behind evidence, not hope.
- Continuous testing, scaling what works. A constant test cadence surfaced what worked; we then concentrated budget on the winners and cut the rest.
None of these works alone. Wired together — and to revenue — they’re the distance between £9,867 and £1,573.
Cheaper, or actually better?
The obvious worry when cost per outcome falls this hard is quality. It’s easy to make cost per opportunity drop — lower the bar for what counts, or flood the funnel with cheap volume. But that worry only bites if you can’t see revenue. Because our model ties opportunities to the pipeline and closed deals behind them, we could set the guardrail up front: pipeline value per pound had to hold as volume climbed, or the win wasn’t real.
We stopped optimising only the bottom of the funnel
The single biggest structural move was widening the channel mix. A programme built only to capture in-market demand has a hard ceiling: you can optimise the ratio all day, but you cannot harvest an audience that isn’t growing. So we invested up-funnel — in demand creation and brand — alongside the performance channels. That is what demand generation actually is: building brand while optimising performance, not one at the expense of the other.
It felt like the expensive choice and turned out to be the efficient one. Performance-only optimisation is prohibitive to scaling: pour more budget into the same bottom-funnel channels and you simply bid up CPMs against a finite audience. Widening the funnel broke that ceiling, and the warmer demand it created lowered the cost of everything downstream. Growth and efficiency, from the same move.
A step-change in efficiency, not a blip
Blended cost per opportunity didn’t wobble down — it fell from £9,867 in 2022 to a five-year low of £1,365 in 2025, and sits at £1,573 in 2026 year-to-date, an 84% fall from where it started. But cost is only half the story. Because we measure to revenue, we can see the other half: the pipeline behind those opportunities scaled at the very same time, and return on ad spend nearly doubled.
Growth and efficiency only trade off when your data can’t see revenue. Wire media to pipeline, and the same decision does both.
Before vs after — 2022 to 2026
| Metric (blended portfolio) | 2022 | Latest | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pipeline ROAS (2026 YTD) | 4.36× | 8.2× | +88% |
| Blended cost per opportunity (2026 YTD) | £9,867 | £1,573 | −84% |
| Channel mix | Capture-led | Full-funnel | widened |
| Opportunities generated (2025) | 42 | 1,610 | 38× |
| Pipeline generated, indexed (2025, 2022 = 100) | 100 | 616 | +516% |
The headline: pipeline return on ad spend nearly doubled, from 4.36× to 8.2×, while blended cost per opportunity fell 84% and opportunities grew 38×. Not a cheaper click. A programme that scaled pipeline and cut its cost in the same motion, because every pound was measured against revenue.
We got cheaper without getting thinner
If the extra opportunities had been junk, pipeline ROAS would have sagged as volume climbed. It did the opposite — it nearly doubled, from 4.36× in 2022 to a five-year high of 8.2× in 2026 year-to-date. That is only knowable because the model connects opportunities to the pipeline and revenue behind them; without that link, we’d be guessing at quality. Cheaper opportunities were not thinner opportunities — the pound of media worked harder, not less hard.
The transferable lesson
Growth and efficiency stop competing the moment your data model can see revenue. Measure media against pipeline, not clicks or leads. Diversify the funnel so you’re creating demand and building brand, not only harvesting it — performance-only optimisation is a ceiling, not a strategy. Hold capital discipline so budget follows returns, test continuously, and scale what works. Do that, and the trade-off everyone accepts simply stops applying.
What we’re watching next
- Whether 2026 holds. Sustaining the record 8.2× ROAS and sub-£1,600 cost per opportunity across a full year, not just year-to-date.
- Win rates as cohorts mature. The newest opportunities haven’t all closed; we’re watching close-lag before calling the win-rate trend.
- Pushing the model deeper. Extending measurement from pipeline through to committed and recognised revenue, so the same discipline optimises the number the business actually books.
Methodology. Figures are blended across every paid-media account in the Ziggy portfolio, normalised to GBP. Opportunities are qualified opportunities attributed to paid media on a first-touch basis, deduplicated to one row per opportunity, and joined to pipeline and closed-revenue outcomes in our data model. Pipeline ROAS and blended cost per opportunity are shown as measured, 2022 to 2026 year-to-date; opportunity counts are actual and shown to 2025, the last complete year; pipeline is shown indexed to 2022 = 100 to keep commercially sensitive absolutes private, consistent with our public benchmark. 2026 is a year-to-date figure; win-rate metrics carry close lag on the most recent cohorts. Source: internal pipeline data layer (funnel) and media platforms (channel media).
See the full five-year benchmark — cost per lead, cost per opportunity, pipeline efficiency and win rates, all on one page: ziggy.agency/paid-benchmark-data.
