Dreamdata's LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks Report 2026, built on more than 3.5 million B2B customer journeys and 66 million sessions, puts a number on something I hear from B2B leadership teams in Ireland all the time, that the buyer seems to have made up their mind before the first sales call. According to the report, 81% of the B2B customer journey now takes place before a sales pipeline opens, up from 70% just one year earlier.
I read the report as a follow on from the LinkedIn webinar I wrote about in What LinkedIn's Own AI Search Case Study Means for B2B Companies, because it tells the same story from a different angle. LinkedIn showed that website traffic can fall while lead quality rises, and Dreamdata shows how much of the decision is now made in places a sales team never sees, which is exactly where AI search does its work.
How much of the B2B buying journey happens before sales gets involved?
In Dreamdata's 2026 benchmark data, 81% of the B2B customer journey happens before a sales pipeline opens, an 11 point rise in a single year. That means the research, the shortlisting and much of the opinion forming happen while the buyer is still anonymous to the companies they are considering, and in my view that changes what marketing is actually responsible for in a growing B2B company.
The report describes this early stage as the longest and most influential part of the journey and also the least visible in traditional reporting, because CRMs are not built to connect anonymous early touches to a deal that closes months later. I think that is the honest explanation for why so many marketing reports feel disconnected from revenue, since the part of the journey that matters most is the part the usual dashboards cannot see.
How long does a B2B buying journey take?
Dreamdata reports an average of 272 days from the first marketing touch to closed revenue, and the number of touches in a typical journey rose from 76 to 88 between 2024 and 2025, spread across more channels and more stakeholders in the buying group. Nine months is a long time for a buyer to be forming a view of your company, and it is a long time for that view to be shaped by whatever ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google and LinkedIn happen to say about you.
This is the figure I would put in front of any leadership team that judges marketing on last month's results, because a channel that influenced a deal in March may not show up in revenue until the end of the year. The same report notes that 78% of B2B CMOs say proving return on investment has become more important over the last two years, and I see that pressure as a reason to measure the full journey properly, never as a reason to shorten it.
What does AI search have to do with the B2B buying journey?
AI search is increasingly where the early, anonymous part of the B2B buying journey takes place, because buyers can get a researched answer to their question without visiting a single supplier website. Dreamdata links this directly to search behaviour, reporting that non-branded Google Search clicks cost 29% more than in 2024 while click-through rates fell 26%, as AI-generated answers satisfy buyer questions in the results page itself.
For me the important word in that finding is remembered. When research happens inside an AI summary, the companies that get named are the ones with clear, consistent, well-sourced information across their website, their founders' LinkedIn presence, reviews and the wider press, and those names travel with the buyer through the rest of the 272 days. This is also why I would never set AI search against SEO, since AI tools rely on well structured, crawlable websites and sound SEO remains the foundation that AI search visibility builds on.
Why are B2B budgets moving towards LinkedIn?
Dreamdata's data shows LinkedIn's share of paid social budget among its customers rising from 39% in 2024 to 41% in 2025, with LinkedIn delivering the strongest return on ad spend of the channels compared. The report connects this shift to the decline in non-branded search efficiency, as B2B marketers invest more in being known by the buying group earlier in the journey.
That matches what LinkedIn shared about its own measurement, and it fits with the wider point that LinkedIn is one of the sources AI tools cite most often. I would add one caution, which is that paid activity on its own does not build the kind of authority AI search draws on, so the companies I would expect to benefit most are the ones pairing visibility on LinkedIn with genuine expertise from senior people in the business.
How should B2B companies in Ireland read these benchmarks?
These benchmarks are best read as an outside reference point for Irish B2B companies, not a description of the Irish market. Dreamdata sells B2B measurement software and is a LinkedIn partner, and its data comes from its own customer base, which leans towards technology companies, so the direction of travel is more useful than the exact figures for any one business.
What I take from it is that the questions worth asking in a 2027 plan are about the whole journey, such as where buyers first come across the company, what AI tools say when they ask the questions that come before a shortlist, and how qualified pipeline is measured alongside traffic. I wrote more about setting those numbers in How to Plan Your B2B Marketing Budget for 2027, Starting with Pipeline.
If you would like to see how your company shows up in the part of the journey your sales team never sees, including what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google say about you today, I would be glad to walk through it with you on a short call.