2025 ANNUAL REPORT
2025 State of Rehab Marketing: PPC Benchmarks & Performance Data
We aggregated PPC performance data across our full client base for every month they worked with us in 2025. No cherry-picked accounts. No outliers removed. Just the real numbers.
FULL FUNNEL BENCHMARKS
2025 PPC Performance: Every Stage of the Funnel
Aggregated across all active Webserv clients in 2025. Numbers represent the average across the full client base — not best-case scenarios.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What the Data Actually Tells You
Four things every treatment center operator should understand before setting a 2025 marketing budget.
Most of Your Budget Is Lost Before the VOB
Only 15.9% of leads complete a VOB — which means for every 100 leads your campaigns generate, 84 of them never get verified. That's not a marketing problem on its own. It's a combination of lead quality, speed-to-contact, and intake process. The facilities that close the gap here aren't necessarily spending more — they're responding faster, qualifying smarter, and making it easier for leads to take the next step. The cost of a lead isn't $406. The real question is what's happening to the other 84.
VOB Quality Matters More Than VOB Volume
42.8% of completed VOBs came back viable — meaning more than half of the leads that made it to verification didn't match the facility's payer mix or level of care. More VOBs isn't the answer if the underlying targeting is pulling in the wrong insurance types. The facilities that consistently beat this benchmark are the ones doing the work upstream — tightening geo and demographic targeting, refining ad creative to attract in-network leads, and training admissions teams to pre-qualify before initiating a full VOB. Volume without quality just burns budget faster.
The Admit Rate Is Where Most Facilities Bleed
Only 35.9% of viable VOBs converted to admits — meaning facilities lost more than 6 in 10 at the final stage, even after insurance was confirmed. At this point in the funnel, marketing has done its job. The lead is qualified, the insurance checks out, and the patient is still considering treatment. What kills the conversion here is almost always an admissions operations issue — slow follow-up, undertrained staff, no structured follow-up sequence, or a CRM that isn't tracking where leads are dropping. This is the highest-leverage stage to fix because the marketing cost has already been spent.
$16,608 Per Admit Is a Starting Point, Not a Target
The average cost per admit across our full client base in 2025 was $16,608. That number reflects the full range — facilities with strong admissions processes and tight payer mix targeting, and facilities that were still working through inefficiencies at every stage of the funnel. It's a useful benchmark for context, but it shouldn't be treated as a goal. The facilities consistently operating below this number share a few things in common: they track every stage of the funnel, they treat admissions operations as part of the marketing system, and they make decisions based on cost per admit — not cost per lead.
A NOTE ON TRANSPARENCY
Why We Publish the Real Numbers
Because the industry has a honesty problem — and facilities deserve better than a sales pitch dressed up as data.
Be Cautious of Benchmarks That Sound Too Good
Facilities shopping for marketing partners regularly hear claims like "we can get you admits for $2,000" or "our cost per VOB is a fraction of the industry average." These numbers aren't just optimistic — they're often fabricated. Agencies that lead with impossibly low benchmarks are either cherry-picking their best-case data, excluding major cost components from the calculation, or simply telling facilities what they want to hear to close a deal.
The reality is that treatment center marketing is expensive, competitive, and complex. A realistic cost per admit in 2025 — accounting for the full funnel from click to census — is closer to $16,608 based on our data. Facilities that plan budgets around $2,000 per admit are going to be disappointed, underfunded, and looking for a new agency within six months.
A Note on Variance in This Data
This report aggregates performance data across a mix of in-network and out-of-network facilities. That distinction matters — out-of-network programs typically see higher cost per admit due to a smaller pool of viable leads and a more selective verification process, while in-network facilities often benefit from broader insurance acceptance and higher VOB conversion rates.
Because our client base includes both, the benchmarks in this report represent an aggregate average across facility types. Your own numbers will vary based on your network status, payer mix, geographic market, level of care, and the strength of your admissions process. Use these benchmarks as directional context — not as a precise prediction of what your program should expect.
We publish this data because we believe facilities make better decisions when they have accurate benchmarks. If an agency is quoting you numbers that look nothing like what you see here, ask them to show you the methodology behind their claims.
HOW TO USE THIS DATA
Comparing Your Numbers to the Benchmark
These benchmarks are most useful when you treat them as a diagnostic tool — not a report card.
Pull your own funnel data for 2025
You need the same five numbers we used to build this report: total ad spend, leads generated, VOBs completed, viable VOBs, and admits. If you don't have all five, start with what you have and identify the gaps. Most facilities track spend and leads reasonably well — where it tends to break down is at the VOB stage, and almost nobody is tracking viable VOBs separately from total VOBs. That distinction matters more than any other number in the funnel.
Calculate your conversion rate at each stage
Divide each stage by the one above it to get your conversion rates. Lead → VOB tells you how well your intake team is engaging inbound leads. VOB → Viable VOB tells you how well your targeting is matching your payer mix. Viable VOB → Admit tells you how well your admissions team is closing. Each stage points to a different part of your operation. Where you're significantly below the benchmark is where you have the most room to improve — and where you're above it is a competitive advantage worth protecting.
Identify whether the gap is marketing or admissions
This is the most important diagnostic step. Lead → VOB gaps are almost always a lead quality or speed-to-contact issue — either the targeting is pulling in the wrong audience, or the admissions team isn't reaching leads fast enough. VOB → Viable VOB gaps point to payer mix misalignment between your ad targeting and your accepted insurance. Viable VOB → Admit gaps are nearly always an admissions operations problem — undertrained staff, no structured follow-up cadence, or a CRM that isn't supporting the process. Knowing which category your gap falls into tells you where to invest next.
Use cost per admit — not cost per lead — as your north star
Cost per lead is the metric most agencies report because it's the easiest to influence and the easiest to make look good. A $150 CPL looks great in a monthly report — until you realize those leads aren't verifying, or they're verifying with insurance you don't accept, or they're getting lost in a broken admissions process. Cost per admit is the only metric that accounts for everything that happens between the click and the census. It's harder to calculate, harder to optimize, and harder to report — which is exactly why most agencies avoid it. It's also the only one that tells you whether your marketing spend is generating real revenue.
Looking for a Broader View?
Our 2024 State of Rehab Marketing report covers both PPC and SEO performance — giving treatment center operators a full picture of what top-performing facilities spent, where they spent it, and what they got back.
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