Unlock the Secret LinkedIn Ad Strategies B2B Marketers Swear By—#3 Will Surprise You!
Ever wonder how LinkedIn—yes, that professional networking site where your mom probably just joined—has been quietly transforming into a B2B advertising powerhouse? Last year, it dropped some nifty updates that made a serious splash with our clients, and as we step into 2026, sticking to old marketing scripts just won’t cut it anymore. From the rise of bite-sized short-form videos that actually get noticed, to the surprisingly punchy Thought Leader Ads that punch way above their weight, there’s a lot to unpack. Oh, and don’t even get me started on personalized ads—spoiler alert: they’re slicing cost per lead like a hot knife through butter. Curious about how to leverage these LinkedIn goldmines without wasting your budget? Let me walk you through the insider hacks and what’s worth your sweat this year. LEARN MORE.
LinkedIn made some good moves last year that I’ve seen pay off for our suite of B2B clients. Now that we’re into 2026, with yearly marketing goals in focus, I’ve got some recommendations based on our 2025 learnings for you to test and leverage in the coming months. Those include:
- Video.
- Thought Leader Ads.
- Personalized creative.
- Qualified Lead Optimization.
- Ads duplication.
Let’s put a magnifying glass on each and explain the benefits you stand to gain.
Short-form video is becoming essential on LinkedIn
Even though Meta and TikTok are better fits for video, LinkedIn isn’t immune to the video movement — particularly short-form video (7-15 seconds). While having video content is an important line item in your marketing strategy, the right content is even more important.
There are plenty of ways to leverage video, including new-ish placements like First Impression Ads. I recommend you try video ads in the feed first to compare performance and engagement with other in-feed ads you’ve been running.
The usual caveats apply here:
Don’t just repurpose videos from other platforms. Beyond its unique UI, which can affect whether video content stands out, LinkedIn also drives different behavior among its users. Test videos that speak to a professional challenge your brand can help solve, or highlight testimonials, tutorials, or case studies.
The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need.
Make sure you have a follow-up plan for users who engage, since a single video won’t convert anyone into a customer without extensive nurturing.
Set a strategy for measuring the value of video engagements, from views to direct responses that take action on prompts like “Comment X for the full guide.”
Thought Leader Ads outperform many brand ads
One of the toughest parts of B2B advertising is engaging potential customers on behalf of a business or corporate entity. Thought Leader Ads (where companies can essentially boost content from employee accounts) have actually been around for a couple of years. Still, we got serious about testing them in 2025 and earned much higher engagement than with typical ads from business profiles.
TLAs open up some creativity, too. Humor-focused posts, for one, are a lot more natural a fit from a personal account.
As with other boosted content, be judicious about where you invest. If a post already has traction organically (and that’s become harder over the last year as LinkedIn has throttled back reach) and makes a good business case for working with your company, that’s a good candidate for a TLA.
A couple of caveats here, too:
Make sure any employee whose content you boost has your brand as visible as possible on their profile and has creator mode activated so that users can follow them (which creates long-term value for future posts).
Per LinkedIn (we’ve also seen this to be true), it’s best to repurpose content originally published fewer than 30 days before you boost the post.
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Personalized LinkedIn ads significantly improve cost per lead
In the latter half of 2025, we ran a significant number of tests with personalized LinkedIn ads across different geos and using different campaign types.
In our global campaigns, we saw an average of >20% improvement in cost per lead, with higher CTR and lower CPC. U.S. campaigns were even more successful. CPLs dropped 33%.
Per our LinkedIn rep, European users in particular value privacy more than U.S. users, so it makes sense that personalization was more effective stateside. Either way, and even in U.S. campaigns, personalized ads began to show signs of fatigue after about a month.
We responded by combining personalized and non-personalized ads into a single campaign to lower the frequency of personalized ads — and to allow side-by-side comparisons in the same environment.
Qualified Lead Optimization helps LinkedIn prioritize higher-quality prospects
If you’ve run Conversions API (CAPI) and enhanced conversions in Meta and Google, you’re familiar with the idea of Qualified Lead Optimization. Essentially, this is LinkedIn’s way of letting you integrate your first-party data into the platform’s back end to help its algorithm find higher-quality users.
Now, this isn’t quite as effective as its Meta and Google counterparts yet, but we’ve seen an increase in the proportion of qualified leads.
To test it:
Use LinkedIn’s CAPI to sync your CRM data and provide the platform with your definition of a qualified lead.
Set up a CAPI conversion event for qualified leads and ensure they are relayed to the Campaign Manager.
LinkedIn’s ad duplication feature speeds campaign launches
LinkedIn’s ad duplication feature is tactical, but it’s saved me a ton of time in our accounts, so it’s worth making sure you’re aware of it.
Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform.
In March 2025, LinkedIn launched a few updates to Campaign Manager, including a new feature that makes it easier to duplicate ads across campaigns and accounts. This has greatly improved our time to launch new campaigns – there’s no downside to getting your hands around it.
LinkedIn CTV ads may become a new testing channel
We haven’t yet aggressively tested LinkedIn’s new CTV capability, but we’re keeping an eye on industry perspectives. This can be a great medium to gauge the messaging and positioning that work for your brand, with niche-targeting options, before rolling out big-screen campaigns.
In the scheme of things, LinkedIn provided some quality-enough updates last year for us to shift more client budget there. As always, you need to set the right expectations for the platform and ensure you have a strong methodology for measuring its value in your pipeline.
With those in place, and with a rock-solid understanding of your ICP that lets you fully leverage LinkedIn’s targeting levers, I’m betting LinkedIn can be a pleasantly surprising source of growth in the coming months.
Key takeaways
- Short-form video ads are becoming increasingly effective on LinkedIn.
- Thought Leader Ads often generate higher engagement than ads from company pages.
- Personalized creative can significantly improve click-through rates and cost per lead.
- Qualified Lead Optimization helps LinkedIn prioritize higher-quality leads using CRM data.
Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. MarTech is owned by Semrush. Contributor was not asked to make any direct or indirect mentions of Semrush. The opinions they express are their own.
Laura Schiele, Head of Paid Acquisition at Jordan Digital Marketing, has nearly a decade of experience in paid media strategy and execution in both agency and in-house accounts and uses advanced analytics skills to scale growth within efficiency goals across Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, and more. Laura manages a large team of paid media experts remotely from her home in Burlington, VT.
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