• How video has become the language of modern buyers
• How demand generation is evolving beyond leads to long-term pipeline health
• How events are turning into full-funnel experience engines
• How measurement is giving marketers clearer views of what’s working
• How the future of thought leadership is people-powered, as brands focus on building strategic partnerships with creators

It would be impossible to cover the full picture of B2B marketing this year without recognizing a true powerhouse in every marketer’s toolkit: AI.

We are at an incredibly exciting point in time. Workflows are being redefined. New use cases are coming together before our eyes. The possibilities feel endless, and that part can be a little intimidating. Where to start?

B2B leaders are no longer wondering whether to use AI, but how to use it. The answer is going to vary across teams and organizations. In looking over benchmarking data and inspiring success stories, however, a few key themes stand out for marketers who want to find their focus and achieve measurable benefits. 

From experimental to operational: The new AI norm

LinkedIn’s research for the 2025 B2B Marketing Benchmark found that 95% of B2B marketers are now using AI at least weekly, while 65% use it daily. In other words, using AI for marketing isn’t a competitive advantage — more of an equalizer. To gain an edge, you’ve got to go deeper and use it more effectively.

For leaders, it starts with modeling a curious and confident mindset, while providing the resources and conditions to develop an AI-proficient workforce. 

Insight #6: It’s Time to Upskill and Level Up with AI

There are major opportunities for B2B marketers to better understand their audiences and build stronger campaigns through more advanced applications of AI, but it all starts with intentional upskilling across teams.

Building skills to thrive in the age of AI

Despite the high adoption rate of AI, only 32% of respondents in our latest benchmark survey rated their expertise as “extremely good,” remaining flat from last year’s report. Even leadership is at a deficit, with just 38% of CMOs saying they feel highly confident in their AI skills. 

In terms of how B2B marketers can improve their effectiveness with using AI, “training and skill-building” was the top response. 

Marketing leaders can help their teams (and themselves) brush up on the basics by getting familiar with common use cases. Brad Batesole overviews many of them in the LinkedIn Learning course AI for Marketing, including: 

• Drafting a value proposition with AI suggestions
• Using ChatGPT to write marketing drip campaigns or analyze marketing data
• Creating PowerPoint presentations with help from Copilot
• Automating tasks with Zapier AI

LinkedIn Learning offers a wide range of specific AI skill-building resources, but that’s only one way to sharpen AI proficiency across teams. Consider running goal-oriented experiments or team activities to put AI tools and techniques into practice. Encourage people to level up beyond the fundamentals; research shows that many marketers are still operating at a shallow task-based level, with ample opportunity to use AI in a more strategic, orchestrated fashion.

Improving customer insight and audience targeting

The oldest and most enduring commandment of marketing: Know Thy Customer. As B2B teams start building their adeptness and comfort level with AI, this is one area where the impact can be enormous.

The growing use of AI to enhance segmentation and targeting is a driving trend in advertising, at a time where audiences increasingly demand relevant, tailored content. At LinkedIn we are continually evolving our tools, introducing new capabilities to ensure you can step into the future of B2B audience targeting with help from the latest innovations. 

A key innovation is Buyer Groups, which use LinkedIn’s AI to identify and target the decision-makers and key stakeholders involved in company purchasing. By analyzing professional signals, buyer groups help you reach those with authority and influence, boosting your impact and return on investment while minimizing wasted impressions. This targeted approach makes your ad spend more efficient and effective. 

As another example, Predictive Audiences uses LinkedIn's AI to combine the millions of engagements taking place on the platform with your data, helping you reach high-intent audiences that are more likely to convert. LinkedIn Accelerate also helps you target smarter by using your own brand and product info to guide audience suggestions. Of course, AI tools can help marketers deliver more personalized content to these audiences at scale while spanning job functions and buying committee roles.

When you’re reaching your audience more effectively and serving fewer wasted impressions, cost efficiency tends to naturally follow: Early tests showed a 21% CPL reduction in campaigns using predictive audiences and lead gen objectives, and one enterprise customer shared that they were seeing double the leads at half the cost. 

Learn more in our resource center: AI in Marketing: Trends, Tools and Best Practices

Jumpstarting creativity and campaign momentum

AI is not a replacement for creativity. It’s a multiplier. Respondents in the B2B Marketing Benchmark pointed to a variety of ways that AI is enhancing their creative processes, from reducing production time to enabling real-time iteration.

AI is not a replacement for creativity. It’s a multiplier. Respondents in the B2B Marketing Benchmark pointed to a variety of ways that AI is enhancing their creative processes, from reducing production time to enabling real-time iteration. LinkedIn’s AI-powered tools, like AI Ad Variants and flexible ad creation, further amplify this by helping marketers quickly generate on-brand content and optimize creative combinations, saving time while boosting campaign performance.

Whether it’s content creation, research, analysis or campaign management, B2B marketers say they are saving a ton of time thanks to AI — about 20 hours per week on average. This means teams are now actually empowered to meet that seemingly impossible directive of doing more with less. They are running more campaigns, reaching new audiences and experimenting with fresh ideas, all without sacrificing the human-centered core of their marketing engine.

That’s the promise of AI, and we’ll see it realized more than ever in 2026.

Want to quickly experience how AI features can improve your efficiency and campaign results? Jump into LinkedIn Accelerate now and see for yourself.

     

If you're a B2B marketer, the signs are unmistakable. Your webinar registrations are declining. Your organic traffic numbers tell an uncomfortable story. And your paid search campaigns are delivering diminishing returns at escalating costs.

This isn't a temporary market correction. The entire B2B buying landscape has fundamentally transformed.

Factors.ai, a LinkedIn Marketing Partner for Audiences, B2B Attribution & Analytics, Reporting, and Signals, analyzed performance data from over 100 B2B companies between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025. The findings reveal a decisive shift: while traditional demand generation channels face systemic headwinds, one platform demonstrates sustained growth and performance - LinkedIn.

Traditional Channels Are Under Significant Pressure

The data presents a clear picture of channel stress across previously reliable marketing channels.

Organic traffic performance reveals concerning trends. The median organization experienced a year-over-year traffic decline. Among websites generating 50,000 or more monthly sessions, 67% saw traffic decrease. This is a signal that historical domain authority no longer guarantees sustained organic visibility. Paid search presents an even more challenging picture. Median paid search traffic declined 39% while cost per click increased 24%. Organizations are paying significantly more to reach substantially fewer prospects. This represents a fundamental efficiency crisis for performance marketing.

Traditional lead generation assets also show systematic erosion:

• Webinar registrations: down 12.7%
• eBook downloads: down 5% 
• Analyst report downloads: down 26.3%

The decline in gated content performance reflects a fundamental shift in buyer behavior. Decision-makers have developed alternative research methodologies that bypass traditional vendor-controlled conversion points.

The Evolution of B2B Buyer Behavior

Modern B2B purchase decisions involve unprecedented complexity. The typical enterprise buying committee now includes 13 stakeholders, each bringing distinct priorities, evaluation criteria, and approval authority. This expanded committee structure fundamentally changes how marketing organizations need to engage prospects.

Critically, as many as 94% of B2B buyers now use LLMs during their purchasing journey. This technological shift enables buyers to conduct comprehensive vendor analysis, synthesize competitive intelligence, and develop informed preferences before any vendor engagement occurs.

By the time prospects initiate contact with sales, vendor preferences are largely established. Modern buyers enter conversations with shortlists already determined, competitive analysis completed, and selection criteria validated through peer networks and independent research.

The traditional linear funnel - awareness leading to consideration leading to decision- no longer reflects buyer behavior. Instead, organizations navigate non-linear evaluation cycles.They repeatedly return to earlier stages as new stakeholders join the process, requirements evolve, and competitive alternatives emerge. 

Strategic Budget Reallocation Toward LinkedIn

Marketing leaders are responding to these shifts with decisive budget reallocation. The data reveals a systematic pivot at the executive level.

Between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025, LinkedIn advertising budgets increased 31.7% while Google advertising spending grew just 6%. LinkedIn budgets are growing at five times the rate of Google spending, a difference that represents strategic reallocation, not incremental testing.

LinkedIn's share of digital advertising budgets increased from 31.3% to 37.6%. This is a 6.3 percentage point shift representing substantial capital moving from underperforming channels to those demonstrating superior returns.

The Strategic Shift to Brand Awareness Investment

The most significant strategic evolution appears in campaign objectives. The share of LinkedIn campaigns focused on brand awareness or engagement nearly doubled, increasing from 17.5% to 31.3%. 

This shift reflects sophisticated understanding of modern B2B buying dynamics. When buyers begin their journey with established vendor preferences, capturing bottom-of-funnel demand becomes insufficient. By the time prospects signal purchase intent, competitive positioning has already been determined. Organizations focused solely on demand capture are, effectively, arriving after key decisions have been made.

The strategic imperative is clear: build mental availability before buyers enter active evaluation. Mental availability – being the first brand that comes to mind when a need arises – determines initial shortlist composition. When buying committees ask "which vendors should we evaluate?" the brands with established mental availability gain automatic consideration.

This isn't theoretical brand marketing. Mental availability drives measurable commercial outcomes. It explains why certain vendors receive inbound demo requests from prospects already inclined to purchase. It determines which companies achieve efficient customer acquisition while competitors struggle with expensive demand capture tactics.

The Performance Data Validates LinkedIn's ROI Advantage

LinkedIn delivers superior return on advertising spend. Median ROAS for LinkedIn advertising is 1.8x compared to 1.25x for Google; a 44% efficiency advantage that compounds across marketing programs.

Beyond direct response performance, LinkedIn generates significant cross-channel lift:

• Search conversion rates increase 46% for ideal customer profile (ICP) accounts exposed to LinkedIn advertising
• Meeting-to-deal conversion rates improve 43% when prospects have seen LinkedIn ads before sales engagement
• Content marketing conversion rates increase 112% for ICP accounts that engage after LinkedIn ad exposure

These multiplier effects demonstrate LinkedIn's strategic value beyond direct conversions. Every dollar invested in LinkedIn advertising amplifies the effectiveness of search campaigns, sales development efforts, and content marketing programs. The compound effect creates substantially higher returns than channel-specific metrics suggest.

Additionally, cost per ICP account engaged is $257 on LinkedIn versus $560 on Google. Organizations pay less than half to reach more qualified accounts with actual purchase authority. When factoring in multiplier effects across other channels, the total return on LinkedIn investment significantly exceeds traditional performance marketing channels.

Why LinkedIn Delivers Superior B2B Marketing Performance

LinkedIn's advantage stems from three structural factors.

Precise Decision-Maker Targeting: LinkedIn's professional graph enables targeting based on actual job function, seniority, and organizational role. Marketing teams can reach CFOs, VPs of IT, and Directors of Marketing with messaging customized to each stakeholder's specific concerns. When deals require influence across 13-person buying committees, this precision targeting capability becomes strategically essential.

Presence in Active Research Environments: B2B buyers conduct vendor research on LinkedIn. They evaluate executive thought leadership, read peer perspectives, and form initial vendor opinions based on professional presence and authentic expertise. Trust develops through consistent, valuable engagement and not through gated content downloads or demo requests.

Sustained Engagement Throughout Non-Linear Buying Cycles: LinkedIn enables persistent presence throughout extended, complex evaluation processes. Buyers don't stop researching when they leave vendor websites. They continue evaluation on LinkedIn by discussing options with peers, validating capabilities with industry networks, and building internal consensus. Effective marketing maintains visibility throughout these ongoing conversations.

The Strategic Imperative

The data reveals clear trends. Traditional demand generation channels face sustained performance pressure. LinkedIn demonstrates consistent growth across budget allocation, direct performance metrics, and cross-channel multiplier effects.

Marketing leaders who recognize this shift early gain meaningful competitive advantages: earlier buyer engagement, trust development across entire buying committees, and returns that justify continued investment.

B2B buyers haven't stopped purchasing. They've changed how and where they make decisions. They're not attending webinars or filling out lead forms. They're conducting research, building vendor perspectives, and forming preferences on LinkedIn.

The question for marketing leaders isn't whether to invest in LinkedIn. The question is whether your organization will develop LinkedIn excellence on the platform before your competitors do.

Want comprehensive analysis? Download the Factors.ai LinkedIn Benchmark Report for detailed performance data, strategic frameworks, and implementation playbooks for maximizing LinkedIn's cross-channel effects across your go-to-market strategy.

     

Remember when you used to research by opening a dozen tabs, comparing sources, and piecing together an answer? Now, that's collapsed into a single interaction with an AI assistant. But if your brand isn't included in that synthesized response, you're left out of the conversation entirely.

This shift is a revolution for content creators. With Gartner predicting a 50% drop in traditional search volume by 2028 and 94% of B2B buying groups already using AI, the "keyword-first" strategy is dead.

At LinkedIn, we've seen the impact firsthand, with B2B non-brand keyword traffic dropping up to 60% after AI overviews launched. 

So, we had to adapt. We treated our content strategy like a lab to understand how Large Language Models (LLMs) build trust, leading us to shift from a "keyword-first" to an "answer-first" approach.

Now, we are sharing the results. Our new guide, How to Optimize your Owned Content for AI Search, outlines the concrete strategies we leveraged to boost visibility. We aren't just preaching theory; we’re sharing the exact methodology we’ve identified as best-in-class—the same one we are actively implementing to keep our own brand ahead of the curve. Note: This guide focuses on Owned Web Content—content hosted on LinkedIn's web properties, such as LinkedIn Ads —not the linkedin.com social platform.

What we've learned so far and what you'll find in the guide:

• Writing for humans and AI: How to balance tone, readability, and structure to ensure your content is easily digested by algorithms without alienating your audience.
• The technical side of AI search: Understanding the backend elements like schema markup, metadata, and accessibility that signal relevance to AI models.
• Content structure best practices: Using answer-block formatting, logical hierarchies, and clear headings to make your content quotable.
• Visual and media optimization: Leveraging images, videos, and PDFs to act as strong signals for AI discovery.

These are our current recommendations, but we expect them to evolve as we continue to learn and adapt.

Here's a sneak peek of top tips:

Writing for Humans and AI: Key Tips

Content must serve both humans and AI. Focus on quality, clarity, and structure to ensure readability and usefulness for both audiences.

Clarity and Readability

• Write at a Grade 9–11 reading level for simplicity and professionalism.
• Use short, direct sentences under 20 words each. Avoid creative language—stick to facts.
• Assume content will be used out of context; make each section standalone.

Answer Blocks

• Start major sections with a clear 30–80 word summary.
• Follow with detailed explanations and examples for balance.

“If user prompts dictate what and how LLMs pull into the conversation, then content writers need to think about what people are asking in these conversations. We often see people asking the GPTs for ‘the most recent’ research which should help inform your content’s revisions. Don’t just update the timestamp; refresh the content itself to ensure it’s truly current before changing the date.” - Brooke Weller, AI Search Strategist, LinkedIn

Headings and Structure

• Use descriptive headings (e.g., "How Teams Generate Leads") in logical order (H1, H2, H3). Avoid vague labels like "Overview."

Technical Optimization

• Implement schema markup (such as FAQPage) to improve AI discoverability. Pro tip: Tailor your schema markup to reflect your specific products and offerings. Check out schema.org for helpful resources and guidance.
• Use natural language in titles, meta descriptions, and URLs. Match schema with on-page content.

Visual Content

• Use relevant visuals with detailed captions, filenames, and alt text.
• Embed YouTube videos with transcripts and structured data to boost AI visibility.

Adjusting your strategy for the future

AI search is reshaping how people discover information. It raises the bar for content clarity, structure, and usefulness but it doesn’t change one core truth: ultimately, the audience is human.

Optimizing for LLMs is a complement to—not a replacement for—strong SEO fundamentals that will continue to drive results on Google.

Teams that make these adjustments now will be better positioned as this new model becomes standard. We’ve applied the same approach to our own web properties and are already seeing consistent gains, including month‑over‑month increases in brand mentions and citations.

Download our new guide, How to Optimize your Owned Content for AI Search, to start optimizing your owned content for AI search.

Keep an eye out for the next part of our AI Search Series, where we'll share what our team has learned about using LinkedIn for AI visibility. As the second-most cited platform, we're quickly testing what works as Customer Zero and are excited to share our findings.

     

Editor's note: This post was contributed by Amanda Fetterly, Director of Design at Adobe.

Everywhere you look people are engaging with content. Video content in particular, grabs attention in the feed and stops thumbs in their tracks. 

For B2B marketers, content that stops the scroll can add up to big profits. Research from LinkedIn’s B2B Marketing Benchmark research reveals that short-form social video is the #1 driver of ROI among video formats. 

Video is also the most likely format to leave a lasting impression. Video delivers a 95% message retention rate compared to just 10% for text-based content. In a world where buyers quickly narrow their choices to two or three brands, having that edge in retention is huge. 

Video is such an evocative storytelling format. For some marketers, though, it can be an intimidating format. 

Maybe you’ve seen a big brand’s video and thought, I wish we could do that. Now, thanks to the Adobe Express integration with LinkedIn, you can. Here are three principles for producing B2B videos that get noticed, get remembered, and get results.

Principle #1: Make Sure Your Videos Tell a Story

What’s the story? How are you going to tell it? Why does it matter to your audience?

These questions can be tough to answer off-the-cuff, which is why I encourage storyboarding as the first practice for video creation. Storyboarding can be done statically or via an online tool — the important thing is to lay out the story so you really understand the narrative. Storyboarding can also help you consider the context of your viewer in the moments before they see your video, so you can slice through the noise by matching their mindset. 

Your video will have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and storyboarding can help ensure that your final cut is cohesive, makes a clear point, and evokes the right emotion. 

Trends fade. Stories stick. There’s nothing like a well-told story for leaving a lasting impression on the people you need to impress the most. 

As for how to tell better stories with video, it’s always a good idea to gather a lot of footage and experiment with their storytelling. Just be mindful to stay true to the authentic message of your brand. If you want to add on trends or look at trends as a way to cascade information virality, that’s cool, but the best thing is to start with your roots and play around with the resonance of your brand.  

Principle #2: Keep It Simple

Video has to work in the feed. That means designing for sound-off viewing with captions and strong visuals, and delivering your message in the first few seconds. 

Start with the hook. Capture the audience’s attention with a compelling message or visual. What is the main goal of your video? Is it to educate the audience or to get them to consider a solution? Make sure a compelling fact or data point is called out visually or audibly at the beginning of the video. 

Another way to keep things simple is to make the design decisions easier so you can stay focused on the story. Add brand elements within Adobe Express that allow you to easily access your fonts, colors, and logo to stay cohesive across content creation. This speeds up editing time and removes guesswork. 

With the Adobe Express and LinkedIn Campaign Manager now have an integration, marketers can access a collection of attention-grabbing video and image templates specifically optimized for LinkedIn. Every template adheres to LinkedIn’s video ad platforms and specs, so it takes the guesswork out of making creative.

Principle #3: Stay Consistent

Just like having a cohesive beginning, middle, and end increases your chances of creating an effective video, having a cohesive style increases your chances of creating an effective video strategy. 

In other words, when you start a video strategy, stick with it. I like how my LinkedIn Live co-panelist Lauren Firebaugh of Salesforce puts it: “When creative and brand identity are perfectly aligned, the dividends are paid across the entire funnel. Familiarity builds trust at the top, clarity drives engagement in the middle, and consistency sustains credibility at the bottom.”

When you engage your audience regularly and with consistency, that's what's really going to extend your reach because it makes you more memorable. You’re not just producing one-offs. Each video becomes a more sustainable part of your strategy.

Another part of consistency is being able to easily work with your team. In terms of brand cohesion, today you can add and edit all of your storylines, share them with your team, and collaborate all in one place. You can have all of your brand’s logos, colors, fonts, and access to Adobe stock, also all in one place. Any creative assets you have throughout the Adobe ecosystem — Photoshop documents, Illustrator documents, etc. — can be imported into Adobe Express, where you can also schedule and publish posts. Creating branded storytelling videos has never been easier. 

What I like best about centralizing these capabilities, though, is that in some cases we’re helping creative teams escape the need for big production, big budget video. We’re making it easier for B2B marketers to experiment with video production right on the platform where the video will play. 

Which brings me to my final point about staying consistent. Your video strategy should align with what you’re working toward in real life. It should reinforce the brand position you’re striving to establish in your market. 

For example, our strategy at Adobe is consistent with what we actually focus on at work. It all ties back to our goal of making it simple for everyone to produce outstanding creative. 

Watch the full conversation with Amanda Fetterly and other marketing leaders in Lights, Camera, Action: Boost Your B2B Brand with LinkedIn Video to see how data and creativity come together to shape standout B2B campaigns.

     

Over the past few weeks, we’ve explored four core insights shaping B2B marketing in 2026: the rise of video as the language of modern buyers, the evolution of demand generation beyond leads toward long-term pipeline health, the transformation of events into full-funnel experience engines, and the growing role of measurement in giving marketers clearer, more confident views of what’s working.

All of these driving forces in B2B are important. But they have one thing in common: they only really work if people trust the messages they’re seeing.

That’s why this insight might be one of the most important of all: In B2B, people increasingly buy from people, not companies. The future of thought leadership is about natural, fluid partnerships between brands and human voices that buyers already trust.

Insight #5: The Future of Thought Leadership Is People-Powered

Thought leadership has always been about trust. The data just made it obvious. Research from LinkedIn and Edelman in 2024 found that nearly three in four decision-makers say thought leadership is a more trustworthy way to assess a company’s capabilities than its product sheets or marketing materials.

More recently, our 2025 report placed a specific focus on how thought leadership can influence hidden buyers, who tend to hold major sway in buying groups but are hard to reach with traditional sales and marketing methods. A vast majority of these stakeholders (95%) say strong thought leadership makes them more open to outreach.

• Long before “creator economy” became part of B2B vocabulary, buyers were already signaling that they trust insight over self-promotion, and people over logos. Thought leadership is the mechanism by which decision-makers across various roles answer questions like:Do these people understand my world?
• Are they ahead of where the market is going?
• Would I feel confident betting my budget and reputation on them?

What’s changed is the environment in which those questions get answered, and the sources that are most valued.

Why B2B buyers are turning to creators

Buyers are overwhelmed with polished, product-centric messaging. They’re also more connected than ever to peers, specialists and practitioners who talk candidly about what works and what doesn’t. That shift is showing up clearly in the data.

Creators are becoming the new word-of-mouth in B2B. People turn to them to make sense of complex topics, pressure-test assumptions and see how solutions show up in real-world scenarios. This isn’t just a top-of-funnel phenomenon; creator content is making an impact across the buyer journey:

• In early awareness, nearly six in 10 buyers say they discover new brands through creator content.
• During consideration, about two-thirds say creator perspectives help them evaluate options and separate real solutions from noise.
• In the decision phase, nearly half report visiting a vendor website after engaging with creator content, and more than a third say it prompted them to talk to sales.

This is what a modern, people-powered thought leadership engine looks like: trusted experts framing the conversation, rather than relaying the pitch.

Creators, influencers, and employees: Three roles in a people-first ecosystem

As the creator economy matures, the language is still evolving. Are we talking about creators? Influencers? Both? The answer matters less than understanding the intent behind each.

Marketing leaders often distinguish them this way:

• Influencers tend to focus on leveraging established credibility and expertise to sway buying decisions in a specific direction.
• Creators are more focused on building communities and telling compelling stories through educational, engaging content.

In B2B, the most effective partners often blend both roles — they create content people actually want to consume, and they influence how those people think about categories, problems and solutions.

There’s also a third, massively underutilized group: your own employees.

LinkedIn data shows that the combined networks of employees are about 12x larger than a company’s own following. When those employees share their perspectives and experiences, they become some of the most credible voices your brand has — especially when they’re speaking as practitioners first, and “brand representatives” second.

Put together, these three groups form the backbone of the future thought leadership model:

• External creators and influencers who bring reach, fresh perspectives and community.
• Internal experts and executives who shape the narrative and signal strategic direction.
• Employee advocates who make that narrative feel real, lived and grounded in day-to-day work.
  

Five focal points for human-centered thought leadership in 2026

What does a modern, people-first B2B thought leadership program actually look like in practice? A few characteristics stand out across the research and examples:

1. Start with fit, not follower count

The most impactful creators are the ones your buyers already respect — practitioners, operators, niche experts. Brands that win in this space prioritize audience alignment, credibility and subject-matter depth over raw reach.

2. Activate people already close to the work

Creators inside your company often have the deepest, most actionable insight. Modern programs invest in helping these people show up confidently on platforms like LinkedIn, whether through writing support, video coaching or simple prompts.

3. Create with people, not for them

Scripts and overly controlled talking points are the fastest way to drain authenticity. The strongest partnerships give creators clear guardrails and context, then trust them to speak honestly in their own voice.

4. Use paid to scale what’s already working

Organic reach will only get you so far, especially in competitive categories. Thought Leader Ads were built to address this gap by taking posts from individuals (whether internal or external) and promoting them, as-is, to the audiences that matter most.

5. Lean into video to make expertise feel human

Short-form video uploads on LinkedIn have grown sharply, and buyers themselves say video is one of the formats that most influences their decisions.

That’s why video-based Thought Leader Ads and solutions like BrandLink — which places your message alongside premium creator and publisher video — are driving higher completion rates, stronger view rates and higher likelihood to convert into leads.

When a buyer can see and hear the person behind the perspective, it collapses distance. It feels less like marketing and more like a conversation.

Seize the Future of B2B Thought Leadership on LinkedIn

LinkedIn hosts a community of more than 1 billion professionals worldwide, and ranks as the #1 platform for influencing B2B decision-makers. It’s the perfect place to start differentiating your people-led thought leadership strategy, and now is the perfect time. 

Make your next move: Launch a Thought Leader Ads campaign on LinkedIn.

     

Editor’s note: This post was co-authored by Inna Meklin, Director of Digital Marketing at LinkedIn, and Cassie Dell, Group Manager, Organic Growth at LinkedIn. 

AI is rewriting the rules of discovery – and with it, how brands show up.

For decades, marketers chased visibility through clicks, views, rankings, and share of voice. Growing traffic on your website meant that you were successfully activating demand and interest. 

Search was where discovery began and websites turned curiosity into consideration. Success, for the most part, followed a familiar chain: rank, click, visit, convert.

That model is shifting. 

Today, discovery no longer manifests on websites alone. Increasingly, it takes place in AI-generated environments – inside AI answers, summaries, and assistants – often before or without a click occurring. Your website still matters – for trust, depth, and conversion – but it is no longer the primary engine of discovery. 

Visibility is now earned inside generative systems and the signals that matter are changing.

In short, the SEO principles we’ve relied on for years are evolving, and fast. To thrive in this new landscape, marketers must rethink what it means to be discovered. And figure out how to optimize for visibility, before a brand is even considered.

In Part 1 of this series, we argued that visibility – not traffic – is the new currency. In this second installment, we go inside LinkedIn’s own experience: what we observed, tested, and learned so far.

Our Traditional Playbook Wasn’t Enough

In early 2024, our B2B Organic Growth team began hands-on research into Google’s SGE – the beta version of AI Overviews. By early 2025, these changes began to materially impact traffic and the effect was immediate:

• Across the industry, non-brand, awareness-driven traffic declined by up to 60% across a subset of B2B topics.
• Click-through rates softened while rankings stayed stable

The loss was undeniable. Our established playbook wasn’t broken but it needed updating. 

This shift wasn’t unique to us. Industry-wide, zero-click search has become the norm. A 2024 SparkToro/Similarweb study estimated that ~60% of searches in the US/EU end without a click. More recent reporting in 2025 shows that number rising.

Traffic, which was once a marker of SEO success, was disappearing as Google AI Overviews and Chat GPT delivered answers instantly. And as buyers spent more time doing discovery and education inside LLMs, websites began to play a later role in the journey. 

In this new operating environment, visibility was no longer about ranking on a results page; it was about earning credibility and presence inside generative systems where discovery begins.

The Funnel Has Changed and So Must We

While analytics for our LinkedIn B2B marketing websites revealed triple-digit growth in LLM-driven traffic – and we can track how those visitors convert – the real challenge lies in the "dark" funnel. We simply couldn't quantify how visibility within LLM responses impacts the bottom line.

We observed that our down-funnel performance held early, thanks to strong brand health. But we knew that wouldn’t sustain growth unless we increased visibility where discovery now happens: inside generative systems.

The signal was loud and clear. We needed new frameworks, new practices, and a new approach to showing up credibly in AI-led discovery.

How We Evolved Our Approach

We began to rethink how we learn, how we work, and how we measure impact in this new context. Our goal was simple: test, learn, and validate what drives visibility and credibility. To do that, we focused on three critical areas:

1. Deep Landscape Immersion

We built a network of external and internal experts to understand how the discovery ecosystem was evolving. This included:

• Conversations with partners, agencies, and industry peers, alongside insights from credible SEO and GEO/AEO thought leaders posting on LinkedIn.
• Insight-sharing across internal content and marketing teams to monitor and exchange learnings

These inputs helped us map emerging patterns and identify where brands have the strongest opportunities to influence generative outputs.

2. Cross-Functional Activation

We formed an AI Search Taskforce that united SEO, PR, Editorial, Web Marketing, Product Marketing, Product, Partner Marketing, Social, Paid Media, and Brand. Together, we aligned on a unified strategy to accelerate content activation across owned, earned, and social surfaces. This work included:

• Identifying priority topics using AI visibility software, SEO data, demand signals, and LLM insights
• Correcting misinformation surfacing in AI responses
• Expanding depth and clarity on high-performing content
• Launching new owned content optimized for generative visibility
• Publishing articles on LinkedIn to validate social content strength

By uniting content owners and enablers, we created consistent, reinforcing signals across the entire ecosystem.

3. New Measurement Exploration & Testing

Traditional KPIs couldn’t capture impact inside AI answers, so we began building new frameworks centered on visibility, mentions, and citations – not just traffic. Our work included:

• Using AI visibility software to understand how our brand appears in LLMs, both in branded and non-branded contexts
• Supplementing insights with established SEO tools
• Defining new KPIs focused on visibility rate, citation share and mentions across AI Overviews and LLM citations
• Updating internal analytics to create a new traffic source for LLM-driven traffic
• Working to monitor LLM bot traffic and behavior through our CMS logs 

Key Learnings So Far 

Our early testing showed meaningful lift in visibility and citations across the topics we focused on, with owned content delivering the fastest and most scalable gains so far.

Here is what we found.

Content-Level Learnings

• Headings and information hierarchy matter. The more structured and logical your content is, the easier it is for LLMs to understand and surface.
• Content accessibility and semantic markup improves AI readability. Clear HTML structure and accessible text help LLMs correctly interpret the purpose of each section.
• Early movers see advantage. Building credibility quickly creates algorithmic stability with LLMs that make it harder for competitors to overtake position.
• Publishing authoritative, fresh content improves visibility¹. LLMs favor content that signals credibility and relevance, authored by real experts, clearly time-stamped, and written in a conversational, insight-driven style on platforms like LinkedIn.
  

Broader Strategic Learnings

• Cross-functional content and consistency is critical. LLM visibility requires alignment across every team producing content. Shared signals across all surfaces help amplify authority.
• Attribution is evolving. As discovery shifts into AI-driven experiences, tracking impact becomes more complex. Integrating internal analytics with third-party visibility tools is essential to measure influence and scale learnings.
• Early measurement frameworks matter. Start defining KPIs now – like LLM referral traffic, citation and mentions volume, or AI Overview win rate – so you can track influence as generative discovery evolves.

The Road Ahead: What We’re Building Toward

AI-led discovery is moving fast – and so are we. We are committed to redefining the marketing funnel to better capture impact where engagement increasingly happens, inside AI-generated answers.

Our focus moving forward will be guided by the following principles: 

• Staying agile. We are avoiding fixed strategies so we can pivot as platforms evolve.
• Testing and refining. We will expand pilots across new surfaces to understand what drives AI visibility, including how content on LinkedIn itself shows up within AI-led discovery.
• Keep a pulse on the industry. Tracking new platform launches, data trends, and partner insights to anticipate shifts before they happen.

Evolving the mental model. We are moving away from “search, click, website” thinking toward a new model: Be seen, be mentioned, be considered, be chosen.

A New Operating Reality

And we're just getting started. Next, we’ll go deeper on our own story, and the unique advantage LinkedIn brings to AI discovery. We’ll share how we’re using LinkedIn as a social channel, alongside broader social activation and content partnerships, to strengthen AI visibility and improve GEO performance. With LinkedIn already the #2 most‑cited source, we’re seeing strong signals and significant upside at scale.

This post is part of our series on AI search and LLMs. While others theorize, we’re sharing data-driven results.

In part 3, we'll present our new guide, "How to Optimize Your Owned Content for AI Search," highlighting the key pillars needed to boost your visibility. Inside, you’ll learn how to leverage precise answer blocks and explicit definitions to thrive in AI-driven discovery. Stay tuned.

¹ Seer Interactive, 2025 & Arefhs, 2025

     

Events are rapidly transforming in B2B marketing. What were once one-off moments on the calendar are becoming always-on engines that build pipeline, capture buyer intent, and drive long-term engagement. Marketers are seizing this shift to turn events into strategic, high-impact experiences that extend far beyond a single day. This is why we’ve chosen events as the focus for our next insight: showing how B2B marketers are turning traditional gatherings into powerful, revenue-driving engines.

Insight #4: The Old Event Marketing Playbook vs. The New Era

Events have long been an integral part of B2B marketing strategies, and they still are: both in-person events and digital events ranked among the top five channels used by brands, according to our 2024 B2B Marketing Benchmark. But today, the C-suite wants to see impact to the bottom line as an outcome from events, not NPS rankings. As a result, marketers are rethinking their approach to this age-old staple.

There was a time when it might have been seen as sufficient to fire off a round of registration promo for a big annual event or a webinar, then follow up with attendees once or twice afterward. But in light of the evolving B2B buyer’s journey, which now typically spans six-plus months, a more thoughtful and focused approach is needed to get the most out ROI from events.

With the right planning, you can put this approach into action in a way that is intentional and measurable.

Long-term Event Value is Measured with Pipeline, Not Attendance  

It’s no surprise that the majority of marketers are laser focused on proving ROI. It’s a constant thought in the mind of leaders everywhere. The good news is that event marketing is a powerhouse for provable pipeline contribution. But not if you’re simply counting registrations to show impact.

Many brands are struggling with the new reality of enigmatic buyer groups and self-directed decision-makers. We know that 75% of buyers prefer to engage brands on their own terms versus receiving sales outreach. Events can play a key role in warming audiences, generating demand and priming lower-funnel campaigns to succeed. That’s a pivotal strategic role, and needs to be contextualized properly.

Don’t look solely at attendance. Look for signals of advancement and intention.

Intention vs. Attention, and Why Events Hit the Sweet Spot

People direct their attention to all sorts of things. There’s no shortage of options. They might flip on a streaming channel to catch up on their favorite show, or scroll through TikTok to give their mind a break. There’s not necessarily an intention beyond being engaged and entertained.

B2B event attendees also want to be engaged and entertained, but their intention runs deeper: they want to learn, connect and solve problems. Meeting potential buyers and decision-makers in this mindset is exactly what makes events such a huge opportunity for B2B marketers on LinkedIn. 

It’s also why success can’t be measured the same way as TV ratings or viral dance video views. The impact of your event is less about “How many people registered?” and more about the strategic questions: “How many people are interested in learning more about our company?” and “Are we engaging the right professionals?”

The business mindset that members bring to LinkedIn — thinking about how to improve their work, their teams, their processes — makes it an ideal place to build your event strategy. On LinkedIn, members are:

• 44% more trusting of recommendations1
• 18% more receptive to video content
• 25% more willing to click on relevant ads

In this trusted environment, event campaigns are able to capture not just attention, but intention. And that means higher conversion potential. 

Flexible Solutions to Support Any Event

B2B events can come in all shapes and sizes, but each one is capable of making a meaningful impact. We hear frequently from marketers who are asking questions like:

“Can we make a 5,000-person industry summit as targeted as an executive roundtable?”

“Can webinars be true lead generation engines?”

“Can we connect our event campaigns to pipeline results?”

The answer is: yes. Whether you’re running a major product launch event or you’re creating how-to webinars to showcase your software, LinkedIn has options to help you promote before, during and after, with an approach geared toward measurable business outcomes.

Extend Your Reach Beyond the Room 

For flagship conferences and large-scale brand moments, the pressure is on to think big. On LinkedIn, you can build buzz, expand targeted reach and generate real excitement. Use Event Ads to:

• Drive registrations before your event
• Boost livestream engagement during your event
• Promote on-demand replays after your event

Combining ad formats is a proven winning technique for full-funnel success. Use these complementary formats to get even more out of your event:

• Showcase speakers and boost credibility with Thought Leader Ads
• Capture high-intent contacts seamlessly with Lead Gen Forms
• Promote previous conference highlights to drive registration with In-Feed Video Ads
• Spotlight your event agenda with Carousel Ads
• Curate VIP Invitations with Message Ads
• Share content related to the event’s theme, such as whitepapers, with Document Ads

The days and weeks after your event are a critical opportunity to re-engage attendees who may have the content fresh in mind. Activate retargeting to convert attendees into qualified leads, accelerating sales conversations.

Scale the impact of marketing webinars

Webinars and digital live-streams often have lower budgets and smaller audiences than a flagship event, but they can have outsized ROI. LinkedIn offers integrations with Zoom and On24 to support seamless streaming for your webinars.

The same framework from above applies here. Use Event Ads to promote before, during and after — don’t overlook the extended value of promoting on-demand replays. Thought Leader Ads can promote speakers, and you can stoke interest around the topic with organic and sponsored efforts.

We’ve seen customers have success using Sponsored Messaging both before a webinar (i.e. extending personal invites) and in the follow-up.

Results Ready for the CFO

Powerful tools are needed to gain clarity around pipeline contributions. LinkedIn provides a unique measurement ecosystem designed for understanding holistic value, from brand impact to revenue growth. Here’s how we help you connect online engagement to real-world results:

Powerful tools are key to understanding the real value of your events. Stakeholders aren’t asking how many people showed up or how they rated it—they want to know: “Was this event worth it?” LinkedIn’s unique measurement ecosystem helps you move beyond these basic metrics to track actual business outcomes:

• Brand Lift: Measure shifts in awareness and perception.
• Audience Validation: Get unmatched demographic and firmographic insights.
• Engagement Metrics: Uncover meaningful interactions.
• Lead Gen & Conversion: Track qualified leads and retargeting performance.
• Demand Gen Efficiency: Show how event engagement improves downstream performance.
• Revenue Attribution Report: Link CRM data with advertising and marketing activity to show how your campaigns drive real business outcomes.
• Clean Room: Understand how event views influenced pipeline and shortened sales cycles
  

How Salesforce Drove Billions in Pipeline with One Event

Dreamforce is one of the best real-world examples of an iconic annual event that garners acclaim while producing big business results. Salesforce turned to LinkedIn to get the most out of this monumental milestone on the calendar.

This success was achieved through a big-picture view of what events are and what they can be. Across the industry, companies like Salesforce are evolving their approach—moving from event marketing to marketing with events. An annual conference like Dreamforce shouldn't end after the applause fades; rather, they can drive engagement all year long and turn into multipliers of revenue.

How One Moment Turns Into Ongoing Momentum

The value of events in B2B marketing has never been in question. It’s all about how we activate them. The most successful marketers aren’t asking if events drive impact, but how far that impact can go.

When approached strategically, every event — from a global summit to a 30-minute webinar — can become a growth engine that fuels awareness, accelerates demand and drives measurable pipeline. By harnessing the professional intent and trusted environment of LinkedIn, you can extend your reach before, during and long after the event ends, transforming fleeting attention into lasting business outcomes.

It’s time to move from event marketing to marketing with events, where every touchpoint works harder, every campaign lasts longer, and every result is ready for the CFO.

As we wrap up this installment of our “6 B2B Marketing Insights for 2026” series, we’ve now seen how key forces are reshaping the way B2B brands grow—from the rise of video as a full-funnel driver, to the evolving rules of modern demand, the measurement breakthroughs helping marketers prove and amplify impact, and the transformation of events into always-on engines for pipeline, intent capture, and long-term engagement. Watch this space for Insight #5. 

Explore how LinkedIn Events and Event Ads can help you turn your next moment into measurable momentum.

1 LinkedIn internal data 2025

     

To start the new year strong, we’re sharing six key insights every B2B marketer should know. Let's continue our exploration of the timeless fundamentals that endure and evolve as marketing strategies transform.

The series started with a look at video and its eternal resonance, then focused on the new standard for an age-old B2B staple, demand generation.

Today we turn our attention to another ever-present and ever-evolving topic: measurement. There’s nothing new about marketers being asked to show results, but the pursuit of proof has become increasingly complex and pressure-packed. Fortunately, new frameworks and tools are redefining what’s possible when it comes to understanding — and anticipating — B2B marketing impact.

When marketers stop viewing measurement as an obligation and start viewing it as an opportunity, the best path forward becomes much clearer.

Insight #3: The Shift from Reactive to Proactive in B2B Measurement

In some ways, marketing measurement feels reactive by nature. After all, the entire point is quantifying, analyzing and telling a story about what your campaign or program did. Right?

Well, that’s partially true. There’s no doubt that it’s important to develop this retrospective insight so you can validate your approach and prove ROI. But the exercise of marketing measurement can — and must! — go much further in its scope than simply producing a report card. It’s your bridge to the sales team and C-suite; your window to the bigger picture; your most dependable blueprint for growth.

Here’s why marketing leaders should embrace using data to look forward instead of backward, and how to make it happen.

Escaping the ROI Trap

It’s no secret: marketing leaders are being challenged to demonstrate results in clear and convincing fashion. Seventy-eight percent of B2B CMOs say that proving campaign ROI has become more important over the past two years. Two-thirds of B2B marketers (66%) say they are expected to justify marketing spend on a monthly basis. 

This pressure to show results in a hurry can lead to two daunting pitfalls for marketing teams:

1. They undersell the ultimate impact and influence of their campaigns by measuring and reporting before outcomes take shape. (The average B2B buyer journey is 211 days.)
2. They miss opportunities to uncover powerful insights about what’s really working so they can optimize their strategies accordingly. 

In fact, as Afiya Addison of the B2B Institute has written, narrowly focusing on ROI (an efficiency metric) can lead to sacrificing effectiveness, leading into a trap that limits growth potential. The idea of “spending money to make money” is a foundational principle to reclaim—and it becomes far more convincing when marketers articulate the long-term value of that investment rather than the short-term cost. 

Research from LinkedIn and YouGov surfaced three primary roadblocks that reinforces why this ROI trap is so easy to fall into: marketers lack time and resources, face integration challenges, and struggle with sales alignment. These pressures make it tempting to default to near-term metrics. What they need is a framework that addresses these challenges, brings forth marketing’s true value, and optimizes continuously around the outcomes that matter most.

An Updated Framework for B2B Measurement

We recently shared the new rules for B2B marketing measurement, unpacking the four cyclical phases that form into a harmonious loop for growth:

• Define: Clearly identify your business question, success metrics and necessary tools to execute. Use a SMART goal-setting framework to stay focused and grounded.
• Capture: Start capturing campaign signals - using online and offline customer data - to shape your reporting, targeting and optimization approaches.
• Activate: Customize your targeting and use technology like AI to increase campaign reach while continuing to get in front of a high-intent audience.
• Evaluate & Maximize: Analyze and run data-driven experiments to develop a forward-looking view for decision-making.

This framework helps B2B marketers connect marketing activity to real business impact: defining goals, capturing data, activating insights and evaluating results. It transforms measurement from a reporting exercise into a dynamic growth engine that drives smarter decisions, stronger ROI, and better alignment between marketing and sales. That last part is vital.

Sales and Marketing Alignment as a Competitive Advantage

Marketers have been harping on the importance of alignment with sales for many years. It remains elusive: 90% of executives report conflicting priorities between sales and marketing.

A new study from ANA and NewtonX explores traits of the "Confident Marketer": those who are extremely or very confident in their ability to measure marketing’s impact on financial performance. It’s a categorization that only accounts for 39% of B2B marketing leaders, according to the report. One of the most striking findings was that these Confident Marketers were four times more likely to be “fully aligned” with their sales teams compared to their less-confident peers. 

The beauty of the framework highlighted above is that it serves as a vehicle for alignment: defining shared metrics of success (focused on value, not vanity) and optimizing marketing efforts around the outcomes desired by sales. LinkedIn has the revenue attribution tools and partner capabilities to bring it all together.

Use LinkedIn Measurement to Power Your Proactive Growth Engine

LinkedIn offers features and tools to help B2B marketers overcome the challenges of measurement, and unite with sales around a shared vision for key goals and metrics. 

LinkedIn’s Conversions API (CAPI) helps you connect first-party data to optimize campaigns for qualified leads instead of just clicks or impressions. This smarter targeting drives efficiency and impact, helping marketers achieve a 31% lift in conversions, 20% lower cost per action and 39% lower cost per qualified lead.

To meet the demands of B2B reporting, LinkedIn’s revenue attribution measurement tools enable powerful insights like company-level and campaign-level attribution. And again, these capabilities aren’t just about telling a story of what happened — they help you predict what will happen next, smartly optimize budget allocation and accelerate deal velocity. 

Most recently we introduced the Company Intelligence API, further shifting B2B marketing measurement from lead-level tracking to company-level insight while showing how entire organizations engage across paid and organic touchpoints. By integrating with certified B2B Attribution & Analytics Marketing Partners like Dreamdata, Channel99, and Factors.ai, the Company Intelligence API helps organizations see full-funnel impact, prioritize high-value accounts and connect marketing to real revenue outcomes. Early adopters report dramatic gains in visibility and ROI.

Ready to equip your brand to lead the charge in the future of B2B measurement? Head over to Campaign Manager and start exploring all the tools and features available to you.

     

Editor's note: This post was contributed by Nicole Jones, Chief Media Commercial Lead at Kantar.

Most marketers reach for measurement only when a campaign isn't performing as expected. It becomes a troubleshooting tool rather than part of the creative process. But focusing solely on what worries us means overlooking the far greater opportunity in the work that seems to be doing well.

At Kantar, our strongest insights come when we measure everything: standout performers, middle-of-the-road ideas, and creative that didn't land as intended. This is especially true for video, where strong engagement can mask issues with clarity, pacing, or branding that only emerge when you look more closely. Each campaign reveals something different about how audiences think and respond.

That perspective shaped my recent panel discussion with LinkedIn, where we explored how measurement strengthens both brand and performance marketing. What matters most isn't the score of a single campaign, but rather the learning system you build by evaluating creative consistently and without bias toward "good" or "bad."

That's where we'll start.

Why Marketers Avoid Measuring "Good" Campaigns (and Why That's a Mistake)

Many teams fall into the habit of treating strong results as the end of the story. When a campaign delivers high engagement or earns positive feedback, it's easy to assume the work speaks for itself and that deeper analysis won't change anything. But an absence of questions shouldn't be confused with an absence of insight. The truth is that "good" campaigns often hold the most valuable lessons, because they reveal what your audience responds to and which creative choices made that response possible.

Strong results don't replace understanding

Without measurement, you're relying on correlation rather than understanding. You know a campaign worked; you don't know why it worked. And without that clarity, you can't reliably replicate its success or build a stronger version next time.

Standout ads rarely perform uniformly well across every dimension. A campaign might generate high awareness but fail to communicate key messages clearly. It might capture attention early but lose it midway. It might delight viewers but lack distinctive branding. If you only look at top-line performance, you miss what sits beneath the surface: strengths worth repeating and weaknesses worth refining.

Striving for salience

This is why salience is so important. An ad can "perform well" by certain metrics and still struggle to create lasting brand association or meaningful difference. Measuring that layer reveals what drives real impact rather than momentary interaction.

As I often tell teams: measure everything. Even the campaigns you think are fantastic may have elements you can improve next time. Strong results are a starting point for learning, not a reason to stop looking.

Why "Bad" Campaigns Are a Gift 

Underperforming campaigns can feel uncomfortable to review, but they often deliver the clearest lessons. When a piece of creative doesn't land, it reveals precisely where attention drops off, where messaging becomes confusing, or where branding fails to register. In video, those moments are even more visible: watch-time curves, skip points, and drop-offs show exactly where creative stops resonating.

The job-to-be-done must be crystal clear

It’s important to know the job you want your creative to accomplish. When teams launch a campaign without a defined purpose, the story tends to drift. And when the purpose is unclear to the marketer, it's almost always unclear to the audience. That lack of clarity leads to weaker persuasion, weaker recall, and ultimately weaker results.

Revealing hidden weak spots

At Kantar, we see consistent patterns in ads that don't perform as expected. The issue is rarely one catastrophic flaw — it's usually a collection of small choices that compound into a disconnect:

• Message not understood: viewers remember the ad but not the point.
• Branding delayed: recognition comes too late, or not at all.
• Emotional tone mismatched to the audience: humor, urgency, or sentiment doesn't resonate.
• Overloaded visuals: the eye doesn't know where to go, and key cues get lost.

When you measure weak campaigns with the same rigor as strong ones, these patterns become much easier to identify. They also become easier to correct. The insight gained doesn't just improve the underperforming ad, it strengthens your entire creative direction. You learn what to simplify, what to emphasize, and what to adjust so that future work communicates more clearly and connects more deeply.

That's why I always encourage teams not to shy away from their "bad" campaigns. They often contain the most actionable guidance for what to do next.

Measuring Meaningfulness, Difference, and Salience

When evaluating campaigns, it’s essential to zero in on the qualities that matter most. At Kantar, we look closely at three dimensions that consistently predict whether creative will influence both perception and behavior: meaningfulness, difference, and salience.

• Meaningfulness asks whether the ad communicates something relevant to the audience. Does it offer value, clarity, or a solution that aligns with their needs?
• Difference looks at whether the creative feels distinctive in the category. Does it separate the brand from competitors in a way viewers can articulate?
• Salience measures the likelihood that people will remember both the ad and the brand behind it. Even a compelling message has limited impact if it doesn’t stick.

Our brand lift studies evaluate these dimensions across short-term and long-term horizons. In the immediate view, we can see how effectively an ad captures attention and conveys its message. Over time, we track how that exposure contributes to brand equity and future consideration. This layered perspective helps us understand where a campaign succeeded, where it fell short, and how those signals map to meaningful performance outcomes.

When teams integrate these measurements consistently, they gain a far more complete picture of their creative effectiveness. The goal isn’t to label a campaign “good” or “bad.” It’s to learn what drives true impact and apply those learnings to everything that comes next.

A More Confident, Curious Approach to B2B Marketing 

Make measurement a habit. When teams integrate it upfront, they stop viewing results as a pass-or-fail test and start using insights to build stronger creative and more resilient brand equity. Measuring everything from the standout campaigns to the ones that missed will create a clearer picture of what truly drives impact.

This matters even more in video and other rich creative formats, where learning compounds over time. Measurement is what transforms those assets from one-off executions into long-term brand builders.

     

As we continue our exploration of the top 6 B2B Marketing Insights, we’re looking beyond the hype to highlight what truly endures. In our first installment, we showed why video isn’t just another content fad, but a cornerstone.

Now, we’re turning to another timeless truth: the pursuit of quality over quantity in Demand Generation.

Insight #2: There’s a New Quality Standard for B2B Demand Gen

Think of your sales pipeline as a garden. Too often, marketers try to grow it by scattering as many seeds as possible, assuming sheer volume will translate into growth.

But not all seeds — or leads — are created equal. Healthy seeds grow when they’re given the right mix of sunlight and water. Similarly, high-quality leads strengthen when they’re nurtured with relevance, intent signals, and meaningful engagement. And importantly, focusing on quality first is far more cost-efficient to cultivate.

Shifting from quantity to quality in B2B demand generation isn’t a new idea — it’s an ongoing pursuit. But today, data and technology are finally enabling marketers to bring this principle to life at scale — and high-performing brands are seeing the impact.

What Causes Marketers to Chase Quantity in Demand Generation?

Marketing leaders are being asked to play a numbers game and they’re trying to answer accordingly. Research shows that 78% of B2B CMOs believe proving ROI has become more important in the past two years. Nearly half of B2B marketers are asked to justify their marketing spend to C-suite executives monthly.

Feeling the heat, it’s natural to want a big number to present. Chasing lead volume might mean advertising to a very broad audience and setting a relatively low bar for what qualifies as a “lead.” Unfortunately, bowing to short-term pressure in this way can leave marketing leaders at a great disadvantage, subject to wasted spend and low conversion rates. But with 87% of B2B marketers saying that it’s getting harder to measure long-term impact, the best path forward has often felt unclear.

The Shift to Value Over Volume

B2B marketers are leaving behind the obsession with lead volume and prioritizing factors like relevance, trust and intent. They’re zeroing in on the audiences they can actually convert, and leveling up their focused efforts to build awareness, credibility and ultimately interest across buying groups and funnel stages. Here’s how top marketers are tapping into new tools and techniques to actualize a value-driven Demand Generation strategy.

Relevance

It all starts with targeting the right audiences. There’s no use in building demand with people who will never have a use for what you offer. Marketers are dialing in their professional targeting and taking advantage of powerful new tools like predictive audiences, which have been shown to decrease CPL by up to 21% on LinkedIn. “We're getting 2x the amount of leads at half the cost versus half the amount of leads at double the cost,” said one enterprise client in Professional Services, “so that’s really huge.”

Trust

LinkedIn’s 2025 B2B Marketing Benchmark found that 94% agree that trust is the most important factor in achieving B2B brand success. And there’s an old saying that trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets.

To build trust at scale, brands need to show up consistently with a compelling, recognizable and socially reinforced message. Marketers are turning to influencers, creators and video content to foster these trusting perceptions across the buyer journey, and even before it begins. According to Creative Labs research, marketers with mature video strategies — i.e., those using video across channels and funnel stages — are 2.2x more likely to say their brand is well trusted, and 1.8x more likely to say it is well known.

By prioritizing targeted, trust-building content over broad reach, LSEG (formerly Refinitiv) turned thought leadership into a powerful demand engine on LinkedIn. They used targeted Video and Carousel Ads to educate, then retargeted engaged audiences with Lead Gen Forms to convert interest into action. This full-funnel, quality-first approach drove a 96% lower CPL and a 65% higher conversion rate.

Intent

The right mix of relevance and trust sets the stage for high-intent prospects to take action. Evolved B2B marketing strategies are geared toward accurately identifying these prospects and reaching them with the right message, at the right moment. This is where LinkedIn holds a distinct advantage: It’s the #1 platform where decision-makers come to engage with professional products and services^1.

How LinkedIn Helps B2B Marketers Meet Rising Pipeline Demands

Demand Generation does not stand alone, and cannot be effectively optimized on its own. Maximizing the impact of quality-driven demand requires a thoughtful full-funnel approach and the right tools. Top brands on LinkedIn are running full-funnel campaigns that build targeted awareness, prime high-intent buyers for action and drive measurable outcomes. In particular, video has proven to be an extremely powerful tool for driving lower-funnel performance: 87% of marketers say it helps them generate leads, and video ads are 20x more likely to be shared than any other post on LinkedIn. 

Beyond video, marketers are also drawing on LinkedIn’s targeting and data capabilities—such as predictive audiences, retargeting, and third-party data integrations—to more effectively reach the buyers who matter most. Formats like Lead Gen Forms and Conversation Ads help create smoother paths for engagement, allowing professionals to share their information or connect with brands without leaving the platform. Together, these tools support a more holistic approach to Demand Generation, giving marketers practical ways to strengthen impact across every stage of the funnel.

To quantify valuable outcomes, marketers are turning to ad innovations and enhancements designed to accelerate pipeline and prove ROI. These include capabilities like Qualified Lead Optimization and Conversion Value Optimization, which help your brand optimize around value instead of volume. Meanwhile, an evolving set of revenue attribution tools — including company-level and campaign-level attribution — help marketing teams demonstrate this nuanced impact and answer the demand for proof.

Bring it all together, and you begin to see why LinkedIn delivers a 113% return on ad spend, outperforming other major ad networks. 

Ready to meet the rising demands of B2B Demand Generation? LinkedIn can help. Create an ad now.

1(US) Digital Marketer Preferences Research, conducted by CMB on behalf of LinkedIn. May -July, 2025