This guide covers everything I have learned about ABM ads on LinkedIn – both from running my own campaigns for 2+ years, and from analysing 211 companies ZenABM users with over 160k ads and $5.5 million in LinkedIn ad spend – as well as some consulting gigs. I’m covering which ABM ads formats work, which ones drain your budget, how to structure your ABM ads campaigns, and the benchmarks you should be comparing against. All backed by real data – which we published in the ZenABM 2026 LinkedIn ABM Performance Benchmarks Report earlier this year. 
If you only have two minutes, here is what matters:
LinkedIn offers six ad formats. Each one has a different role in an ABM campaign. I am going to rank them by their efficiency score – a composite metric that accounts for CTR, CPC, and overall cost-effectiveness from the ZenABM benchmarks dataset. 
Thought Leader Ads are the single best ad format for ABM on LinkedIn. The data is not even close. Here are the numbers: 2.68% CTR, $3.06 CPC to landing page, 9.5 efficiency score. That efficiency score is more than double the next best format. TLAs deliver 4.3x more landing page clicks per dollar compared to single image ads. Why do they work so well? Because they look like organic posts from real people. LinkedIn users engage with content from humans, not brands. When your CEO or head of marketing shares a story about a problem they solved, it does not feel like an ad. It feels like a post from someone in their network. From our analysis of top-performing TLAs:
The irony is that TLAs currently get only 7-10% of the average ABM budget. That needs to be 40-50%. I have written a full breakdown in the LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads Guide.
Single image ads are the default LinkedIn ad format, and for good reason. They are reliable, straightforward, and get the job done. The numbers: 0.42% CTR, $13.23 CPC, and they currently receive 61.87% of the average ABM budget. That budget share is too high. Single image ads should get 30-35% – not because they are bad, but because TLAs and carousels deserve more of the pie. What separates winning single image ads from losers? Our analysis of top performers found clear patterns:
For a deeper dive, check out the LinkedIn Single Image Ads Best Practices guide. 
Carousel ads are underrated and underfunded. They get only 2.73% of the average ABM budget, but they deserve 12-15%. The headline numbers – 0.32% CTR and $13.30 CPC – look similar to single image ads. But the engagement data tells a different story. Carousel ads generate a 4.56-second average dwell time, which is 25% higher than single image ads. Card 2 gets 2.3x the CTR of Card 1, meaning users who swipe past the first card are deeply engaged. 
This makes carousels ideal for educational content in ABM campaigns. Use them to walk target accounts through a framework, share multiple proof points, or tell a sequential story. Users who swipe through all cards are signaling genuine interest – and that is gold for ABM.
Document ads let you share PDFs, presentations, and other downloadable content directly in the LinkedIn feed. They work well for middle-of-funnel ABM content – think industry reports, benchmark data, or tactical playbooks. The advantage over lead gen forms is that users can preview the content before committing. This attracts higher-quality leads who are genuinely interested in the material, not people who clicked “Download” reflexively and will never open the file.
Text ads are the cheapest format on LinkedIn – around $2 CPM. Most people ignore them for traditional advertising, and they are right to. The click-through rates are terrible. But this is not the reason why you should use them. One reason is that you can treat the horrible click-through rates as a feature not a bug – and use them as a practically FREE, always-on brand awareness banner. But text ads have a hidden superpower for ABM: free website visitor deanonymization. When you run text ads targeted at your ABM list and send them to your website, LinkedIn’s matched audience pixel can identify which companies visited your high-intent pages. At $2 CPM, this is the cheapest way to build a list of engaged accounts without paying for expensive third-party deanonymization tools.
I know this will be controversial, but the data does not lie. Video ads are the worst-performing ABM ad format by efficiency score. The numbers: 0.24% CTR, $15.61 CPC, 1.5 efficiency score. That efficiency score is the lowest of any format. And yet video ads receive 31.72% of the average ABM budget. That is a massive misallocation. Video ads have two problems. First, they are expensive to produce. Second, LinkedIn auto-plays video with sound off, so most users scroll past without engaging. The data shows video should get 5-8% of your ABM budget, not 31%. The one exception: retargeting. Video ads can work for warm audiences who already know your brand. A 30-second customer testimonial shown to accounts in the “Considering” stage can push them toward conversion. But for cold ABM audiences? Save your money. One more thing from our ABM Bootcamp – Ishaant Shakunt shared a finding that stuck with me: “The GIF beat the video by a big margin.” GIFs load faster, play automatically, and do not require sound. If you want motion in your ads, try a GIF first.
These benchmarks come from the ZenABM dataset – 2,828 ads across 211 companies with a combined $5.5 million in LinkedIn ad spend. This is real ABM data, not general LinkedIn advertising data. The distinction matters because ABM audiences are smaller and more targeted, which changes every metric. 
| Ad Format | CTR | CPC to LP | Efficiency Score | Current Budget % | Recommended Budget % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thought Leader Ads | 2.68% | $3.06 | 9.5 | 7-10% | 40-50% |
| Carousel Ads | 0.32% | $13.30 | 4.56 | 2.73% | 12-15% |
| Single Image Ads | 0.42% | $13.23 | 3.8 | 61.87% | 30-35% |
| Video Ads | 0.24% | $15.61 | 1.5 | 31.72% | 5-8% |
| Lead Gen Forms | Varies | Varies | Varies | ~2% | 0-3% |
Here is the most surprising finding from the data. Top-performing ABM accounts – the ones generating the most pipeline – have worse ad-level metrics than the median. Lower CTR. Higher CPC. Fewer total clicks. How is that possible? Because they are running ABM the right way. They target smaller, more specific audiences. They invest in quality creative that speaks to specific pain points. They measure pipeline per dollar, not clicks per dollar. The top performers in our dataset have 3x better pipeline efficiency than the median. They achieve this by running fewer ads (114 vs. 312 median) but spending more per ad and targeting more precisely. Pipeline per dollar is the true north star metric for ABM ads. If you are still reporting on CTR in your ABM dashboards, you are measuring the wrong thing.
This is where most ABM teams are leaving money on the table. The gap between current budget allocation and what the data recommends is significant.
| Ad Format | Current Allocation | Recommended Allocation | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thought Leader Ads | 7-10% | 40-50% | Increase significantly |
| Single Image Ads | 61.87% | 30-35% | Decrease |
| Carousel Ads | 2.73% | 12-15% | Increase |
| Video Ads | 31.72% | 5-8% | Decrease significantly |
| Lead Gen Forms | ~2% | 0-3% | Keep or reduce |
The biggest shift: moving budget from video (31.72% down to 5-8%) and single image (61.87% down to 30-35%) into TLAs (7-10% up to 40-50%) and carousels (2.73% up to 12-15%). I realize this is a big change. You do not need to do it overnight. Start by shifting 10-15% of your video budget to TLAs and measure the impact over 30 days. I guarantee you will see better cost-per-landing-page-click numbers within the first two weeks.
The most common mistake I see in ABM campaign structure is organizing by audience. Teams create one campaign for “C-suite” and another for “Directors” and dump all ad formats into each one. This makes it impossible to control budget by format. Instead, organize by campaign type: one campaign group for TLAs, one for single image ads, one for video, one for carousels. Within each group, you can segment by audience or funnel stage. This gives you direct control over how much budget goes to each format – and makes it easy to implement the allocation shifts I described above. Gabriel Ehrlich shared a recommendation during our ABM Bootcamp that I now follow: run 4-5 ads per campaign. Fewer than 4 does not give LinkedIn enough creative to test. More than 5 spreads your budget too thin and makes it hard to identify winners. 
Different ABM ad formats work at different stages of the buyer journey. Here is how I structure it:
| Funnel Stage | Goal | Best Ad Formats | Creative Approach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cold / Awareness | Engagement and brand recognition | TLAs, Carousels | Educational content, personal stories, industry insights |
| Warm / Consideration | Clicks to landing pages | Single Image Ads, Document Ads | Specific offers, case studies, comparison content |
| Hot / Retargeting | Conversions | Single Image Ads, Video Ads | Direct response, demos, customer testimonials |
| Deanonymization | Identify engaged accounts | Text Ads | Simple brand presence, link to high-intent pages |
Cold audiences need engagement first. Do not hit a cold list with a “Book a demo” ad. They do not know who you are yet. Start with TLAs that share genuine insights. Once they engage, move them into consideration with targeted single image ads that offer something specific. Save the hard sell for retargeting. Btw. ZenABM automatically sorts all your target accounts into stages of the funnel – allowing you to easily move companies between different relevant ABM ad campaigns based on the most relevant funnel stage the company is currently in: 
This was one of the most eye-opening findings from our benchmarks. Top ABM performers run fewer ads. The median company in our dataset runs 312 ads. The top performers run 114. Less than half. But they spend more per ad and invest more in creative quality. Each ad is better targeted, better written, and better designed. The result is 3x better pipeline efficiency. If you are running 300+ ads and seeing mediocre results, try cutting your ad count in half and doubling your investment in each remaining ad. Better creative for a smaller, more targeted audience beats average creative sprayed at everyone.
We analyzed the visual patterns of top-performing ABM ads across our dataset. Here is what the winners have in common:
Equally important are the patterns that consistently underperform. If your ads look like this, it is time for a creative refresh:
For more on what not to do, see LinkedIn Ads Mistakes to Avoid.
Since Thought Leader Ads are the top-performing format, it is worth looking at what makes TLA copy work. The three dominant patterns among top performers:
Notice the common thread: all three patterns lead with a specific, relatable hook. They do not start with “Excited to announce” or “Thrilled to share.” They start with a story or a data point that makes you want to keep reading.
Here is a problem that is unique to ABM advertising: large accounts hogging all your ad impressions + audience fatigue. When you are targeting a list of 500-2,000 companies, and only a handful of them are activce on Linkedin, the same people see your ads over and over. Without frequency management, I have seen accounts hit 80+ impressions per person in a single month. This is wasted budget. So you need to implement impression capping – you can do it natively on LinkedIn Campaign manager (read the post how to do it here) or through tools like Factors.ai (more expensive – $10,000 – but more feature rich) or ZenABM (cheaper – from $59) 
ABM audiences are small by design. A typical ABM list has 200-1,000 target accounts. On LinkedIn, that might translate to 5,000-50,000 people depending on your job title targeting. With standard campaign settings and decent budgets, LinkedIn will exhaust this audience fast. The symptoms of ad fatigue in ABM are predictable: CTR drops week over week, CPC climbs, and your target accounts start associating your brand with that annoying ad they keep seeing. None of that helps your pipeline.
LinkedIn does not offer native frequency capping at the account level, which makes this harder than it should be. Here is what works:
A few tools can help with frequency management:
Running ABM ads effectively requires more than LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Here are the tools I use and recommend: 
| Tool | What It Does for ABM Ads | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn Campaign Manager | Native ad management, audience creation, bid management, conversion trackingThe foundation. | Every ABM campaign starts here. But it only shows campaign-level data – you need additional tools for account-level visibility |
| ZenABM | Company-level analytics, ABM benchmarks, impression capping, CRM sync, funnel stage tracking | Turns LinkedIn Campaign Manager data into account-level insights. Shows which companies are engaging with which ads and tracks them through the buying journey |
| Crayon | Competitive intelligence, ad monitoring | See what ads your competitors are running. Useful for creative inspiration and positioning |
| Factors | Campaign Management, Impression capping for LinkedIn | Controls ad frequency at the account level to prevent audience fatigue + manages campaigns centrally. |
| Clay | List building, data enrichment, account research | Build and enrich your ABM target account list before uploading to LinkedIn |
If you are serious about ABM ads, the minimum stack is LinkedIn Campaign Manager plus one analytics tool that provides company-level data. Without account-level visibility, you are flying blind – you can see that 50 people clicked your ad, but you have no idea which of your target accounts they came from.
For teams getting started with ABM ads on LinkedIn, here is the process I follow. This is the same framework covered in more detail in the Running ABM on LinkedIn guide. Step 1: Build your target account list. Start with 200-500 companies. Use your CRM data, sales input, and tools like Clay to build and enrich the list. Quality matters more than quantity – a focused list of 300 well-researched accounts beats a scraped list of 3,000. Step 2: Upload your list to LinkedIn. Create a matched audience in LinkedIn Campaign Manager using your company list. Give it 24-48 hours for LinkedIn to match the companies. Expect 60-80% match rates for mid-market and enterprise companies. Step 3: Set up your campaign structure. Create separate campaign groups by ad format: one for TLAs, one for single image, one for carousels. Within each group, create campaigns segmented by funnel stage or persona. Use the ABM campaign template to get started fast. Step 4: Create your ads. Start with 4-5 ads per campaign. For TLAs, identify 2-3 internal thought leaders and promote their best organic posts. For single image ads, lead with specific offers and use real photos. For carousels, create educational sequences. Step 5: Set budgets using the recommended allocation. TLAs: 40-50%. Single image: 30-35%. Carousels: 12-15%. Video: 5-8% (retargeting only). Adjust based on your own data after 30 days. Step 6: Monitor at the account level. Do not measure success by campaign-level CTR. Track which target accounts are engaging, how they are progressing through the funnel, and how many are converting to pipeline. This is where tools like ZenABM make the difference.
Thought Leader Ads are the best-performing format for ABM based on the ZenABM dataset of 2,828 ads and $5.5M in spend. TLAs deliver a 2.68% CTR, $3.06 CPC to landing page, and a 9.5 efficiency score. They generate 4.3x more landing page clicks per dollar compared to single image ads. The key is using first-person voice from real people within your company – 65% of top-performing TLAs use “I” voice.
There is no universal answer, but the data suggests that how you allocate your budget matters more than the total amount. Most companies spend 61.87% on single image ads and 31.72% on video – both too high. The recommended split is: TLAs 40-50%, single image 30-35%, carousels 12-15%, video 5-8%. For total budget, start with $3,000-5,000/month for a list of 200-500 target accounts. Scale based on pipeline results, not ad metrics.
Ad fatigue is the biggest operational challenge in ABM advertising because audiences are small. Three tactics work: rotate creatives every 2 weeks, use exclusion audiences to cap impressions per company, and spread budget across multiple ad formats. Tools like ZenABM and Fibbler can automate impression capping at the account level. Without frequency management, a $5,000/month budget targeting 500 companies will burn through your audience within weeks.
Only for retargeting. Video ads have the lowest efficiency score in our dataset (1.5) and the highest CPC ($15.61). They currently get 31.72% of the average ABM budget but the data says they should get 5-8%. The exception is warm audiences – a 30-second customer testimonial shown to accounts already in the “Considering” stage can be effective. For cold audiences, Thought Leader Ads and carousels deliver better results at lower cost. Also consider GIFs as an alternative to video – they load faster and do not require sound.
Pipeline per dollar is the north star metric for ABM ads. This is the counter-intuitive finding from our data: top ABM performers have worse ad metrics (lower CTR, higher CPC) but 3x better pipeline efficiency. They achieve this by targeting smaller, more precise audiences and investing in quality over quantity. Beyond pipeline per dollar, track company-level engagement (which accounts are engaging with which ads), funnel progression (how accounts move from Aware to Considering), and impression frequency (to prevent fatigue). Stop reporting on campaign-level CTR as your primary success metric.
The data from our user research (211 companies and $5.5M in spend) paints a clear picture. Most ABM teams are over-investing in video and single image ads while under-investing in Thought Leader Ads and carousels. The top performers are already making this shift – running fewer, better-targeted ads and measuring pipeline instead of clicks. The companies that figure this out first will have an unfair advantage. ABM audiences are finite. When your competitor is burning through their target account list with 80+ impressions of mediocre video ads, and you are running engaging TLAs at the right frequency with impression capping – you win the attention of those accounts. Start with one change: shift 15% of your video budget to Thought Leader Ads. Measure it for 30 days. Then come back and tell me I was wrong. I am betting you will not. If you want to see these benchmarks for your own campaigns and get company-level tracking for your ABM ads, try ZenABM free for 37 days.
