$139 spent on X vs Meta vs LinkedIn Ads (The Good, The Bad & The Ugly)

I spend a large chunk of my week inside ad dashboards.

Testing creatives. Tweaking audiences. Looking for that one campaign that suddenly decides to outperform everything else.

Over the last few weeks, I decided to run a simple experiment.

Instead of relying on platform marketing claims, agency benchmarks, or “everyone knows LinkedIn is best for B2B” type advice, I wanted to see what happened when I put my own money behind campaigns on X, Meta, and LinkedIn.

The question was simple:

If you’re a business with a limited budget, what do the platforms have to offer?

To keep things as fair as possible:

• For X vs Meta, I ran campaigns for an e-commerce business.
• For X vs LinkedIn, I ran campaigns for a B2B tech company.
• The targeting and campaign objectives were kept as similar as possible.

Budgets were relatively small (around $139), so these results should be viewed as directional rather than definitive.

What happened next genuinely surprised me.

Test 1: X vs Meta for E-commerce

The objective was simple:

Drive traffic and generate purchases for an e-commerce product.

Budget

• X: $14/day
• Meta: ₹2,400/day

After launching both campaigns, one thing became obvious almost immediately.

X was buying attention ridiculously cheaply.

Results

Platform	CPM	CPC
X	$0.1049 (~₹10)	$0.023 (~₹2)
Meta	₹72.87	₹4.10

However, the most interesting metric wasn’t CPM or CPC. It was the cost per result:

• X: ₹75 per result
• Meta: ₹210 per result

As someone who’s run a lot of campaigns, that’s the number I care about most. Even after accounting for currency differences, X delivered significantly cheaper traffic and lower acquisition costs.

The campaign generated over 1.29 million impressions on X with more than 6,000 link clicks at a very low cost.

At least from this test, X appears to be a highly cost-efficient platform for e-commerce advertising in India.

One assumption I had going into this test was that the targeted X users might engage with content but hesitate to buy.

The data didn’t support that assumption.

People clicked, converted and purchased.

At least in this campaign.

Test 2: X vs LinkedIn for a B2B Tech Startup

This comparison was the one I was most curious about.

It’s almost an adage by now: “If you’re B2B, advertise on LinkedIn.”

And logically it makes sense. Decision-makers are there. Targeting is incredibly detailed.

Naturally I wanted to verify this. I ran campaigns for a bootstrapped B2B tech startup with the objective of generating leads.

Budget

• X: $15/day
• LinkedIn: ₹3,750/day

(It’s worth noting that the daily budget on LinkedIn was significantly higher than that on X.)

Results

Platform	CPM	CPC
X	$1.607 (~₹152)	$0.6389 (~₹60)
LinkedIn	₹22,361	₹11,627

Yes, you read that correctly.

LinkedIn’s CPM and CPC were dramatically higher.

I spent several days staring at the results, wondering whether I’d set something up incorrectly.

Lead Generation Results

• X: 26 results from $137 spent
• LinkedIn: 0 results

Zero. Not fewer. Zero.

This was probably the biggest surprise from the entire experiment.

Now before the LinkedIn marketers come after me, this doesn’t mean LinkedIn doesn’t work.

I’ve seen companies generate incredible results on LinkedIn.

But if I were advising an early-stage startup with a limited budget today, these numbers would make it very difficult for me to justify ignoring X as a testing channel.

What Surprised Me Most

The biggest question I had before running the B2B campaign was whether decision makers existed on X.

The answer, at least from this campaign, appears to be yes.

Not only were they active, but they were also engaging and converting.

Again, these are small-budget experiments and should not be treated as universal truths. Different industries, creatives, offers, and targeting setups can produce very different outcomes.

But after running these campaigns, X is looking like a promising platform for businesses in India, especially those that want to test demand without spending large amounts upfront.

The Problems I Ran Into With X Ads

While the performance numbers were encouraging, the platform itself still has several rough edges.

Here are the biggest challenges I encountered with X Ads.

1. Reporting Uses As Per US Time Zone

The reporting system appears to follow US time rather than the advertiser’s local time zone.

I could not find any setting to change this.

For example, when it was already June 1st in India, the dashboard was still showing May 31st because it was following US time.

This makes day-to-day campaign analysis unnecessarily confusing.

2. Audience Insights Shows “Unknown” for Country

Under Audience Insights, the Country section often displays “Unknown.”

Country-level reporting is one of the most basic demographic breakdowns available in any advertising platform, so not being able to see where the impressions were served is frustrating.

3. No Reach Metric

One metric I couldn’t find anywhere was reach.

I can see impressions, views, clicks, and engagement metrics.

What I cannot see is how many unique accounts were exposed to an ad.

Without reach, it’s difficult to understand frequency and audience saturation.

4. Outdated Indian City Names

Several Indian cities still appear with their older names.

For instance, Gurugram is still “Gurgaon” on there. Same with Kochi.

This is a minor issue, but it creates unnecessary confusion when setting up geographic targeting.

5. Analytics Figures Don’t Always Match

One of the most frustrating issues is inconsistent reporting across:

• Ads Analytics
• Account Analytics
• Post Analytics

The numbers frequently differ, and in some cases the differences are substantial.

Even after separating organic and paid activity, I still noticed discrepancies between reports.

Final Thoughts

If someone had told me a few months ago that X would outperform both Meta and LinkedIn in my tests, I probably wouldn’t have believed them. Yet that’s what happened.

But I also know that when a platform consistently surprises you, it’s worth paying attention.

For the e-commerce campaign, X delivered lower acquisition costs than Meta.

For the B2B campaign, X generated leads while LinkedIn generated none.

These tests are small, and I would not use them to declare a winner across all industries and use cases.

Advertising performance is highly dependent on audience, offer, creative quality, and budget.

But if you’re a business that has never experimented with X Ads because you assumed it was expensive or ineffective, it may be worth running a small test.

The platform still has some reporting and analytics issues that need attention, but from a pure performance standpoint, the results were far more encouraging than I expected (at least for now).

As more advertisers try the platform, I believe its CPM will increase. But for now, it’s fun.

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