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Emilia Korczynska is Head of Marketing and co-founder at ZenABM. Before that she was VP of Marketing at Userpilot for nearly 7 years, where she ran a large ABM program primarily on LinkedIn ads.
Account based advertising means running coordinated ads to one named account list across LinkedIn, Google, Meta, Reddit and CTV, with LinkedIn as the core. I'd start with LinkedIn alone and add the rest only once it's saturated.
The hard part is knowing which channel reached which company. Campaign Manager shows clicks per ad, and which company engaged only generally, without granular account journeys. Meanwhile ZenABM's multi-channel revenue attribution puts LinkedIn, Google, Reddit and organic visits on one company journey - making it perfect for this use case.
Let's see how to do account based advertising in 2027 and which tools should you do for it.
Here is the whole post on one card:
This table helps you compare channel and format costs. The Dreamdata figures are in euros and the format figures are in dollars, so don't compare them directly.
Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
Cost per influenced company, LinkedIn | €70.11 | Dreamdata 2026 benchmark |
Cost per influenced company, Google Search | €110.37 | Dreamdata 2026 benchmark |
Cost per influenced company, Meta | €128.70 | Dreamdata 2026 benchmark |
Thought Leader Ad, median CPM and cost per landing page click | $83.59 and $28.73 | ZenABM data, Oct 2026, 168 accounts |
Single image ad, median CPM and cost per landing page click | $54.22 and $15.26 | ZenABM data, Oct 2026, 168 accounts |
Video ad, median CPM and cost per landing page click | $60.87 and $27.39 | ZenABM data, Oct 2026, 168 accounts |
A click is one touchpoint in a long journey, so compare channels per influenced company, not per click. ZenABM puts LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads, Reddit Ads, AI referrals and organic visits on one company journey, so you can see which channels actually touched a deal.
See which companies engage with your LinkedIn ads
Campaign Manager shows clicks per ad, not the company behind them. Book a demo and see every engaging account in one view.
Account based advertising is the paid-media half of multi-channel ABM: one target-account list runs on the platforms those accounts use, and each platform does only the job it is good at. Omnichannel just means being on many platforms. This maps each channel to a stage of the buyer journey.
Think of a surround-sound setup. LinkedIn is the main speaker, Google a booster, Meta and Reddit the rear speakers, and CTV the bass. Adding speakers before the main one works only adds noise.
Justin Rowe from Impactable argues that LinkedIn has a completely different job from Google search. Google wins on in-market search and short sales cycles, while cold LinkedIn targeting has no timing signal, so comparing lead efficiency between them is meaningless. I agree.
LinkedIn is the core because it is the only native ads platform that sees website traffic from Google Ads, SEO and organic. It maps that traffic to companies and roles. Then it lets you retarget it with filters. Charlie Mora-Smith's channel map fits this: LinkedIn builds credibility, Meta supports awareness and retargeting, and Google catches the moment someone raises a hand.
Meta and Reddit reach buyers LinkedIn never touches, but they need native-feeling ads and an enriched list.
CTV goes further. In his Enterprise GTM Systems webinar, Kamil Rextin estimates LinkedIn penetration rarely goes beyond about 40% (his estimate, not LinkedIn's). He says CTV CPMs run roughly 50% lower. But nobody clicks a TV ad, so cost per lead reads as infinite.
The picture below shows how the channels connect:
LinkedIn looks expensive per click but wins on cost per influenced company, because no other channel lets you pick the company and the job title. That matters in a long journey: Dreamdata's data puts a typical buying decision at nine months and 88 touchpoints, so one click is a small part of it.
Cost per influenced company = total channel spend ÷ target companies it reached
In Dreamdata's benchmark LinkedIn came in at €70.11, Google Search at €110.37 and Meta at €128.70. LinkedIn's ROAS was 121%.
Here is what the LinkedIn formats cost, from ZenABM's October 2026 data on 168 LinkedIn ad accounts. Cost per landing page click is spend divided by clicks that reach your page. These are medians per account, so they describe what a typical account pays:
Spend-weighted averages describe what the market pays overall, and they are lower: Thought Leader Ads at $48.40 CPM and $14.64 per landing page click, single image at $46.52 and $9.74. So big spenders pay less than the typical account, and you should plan on the median.
On clicks alone, single image is the lowest of the four. I still lead cold with Thought Leader Ads from the CEO, influencers and especially customers, plus video ads with website visits and document ads, because that is what works for us.
Message and Conversation ads are charged per send and land in the inbox, so CPM, CTR and CPC don't apply. The medians are $0.40 per send with a 48.84% open rate for message ads (17 accounts), and $0.53 with 40.9% for conversation ads (13 accounts).
The right metric is cost per influenced company, but Campaign Manager doesn't show which company is behind an engagement. ZenABM's Company engagements view shows every company engaging with your ads, with its engagement score, ABM stage and CRM data on one row, which Campaign Manager doesn't expose.
LinkedIn anchors, Google captures, Meta and Reddit only retarget, display is the first to go, and CTV is judged by hold-outs.
Display can't match company emails and serves cold impressions that rarely convert. In my view it only earns its place retargeting named accounts. For the full argument see LinkedIn Ads vs display ads for ABM.
Google search is the right tool for transactional, high-intent queries, and exact match worked best for our team. That traffic is finite. Meta and Reddit suit website-visit retargeting here, not standalone ABM. CTV has no clicks, so Kamil Rextin's rule is a hold-out test with 80% of accounts treated and 20% held back, plus downstream signals like outbound reply rate and direct traffic.
You also can't split credit between LinkedIn and Google. In our own program, 37 of 295 ABM-influenced deals also had Google Ads touchpoints, and at B2B volumes you can't divide that credit with statistical confidence.
LinkedIn ads with ZenABM | Google search | Meta and Reddit | CTV | Display | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Job | Precision targeting and qualifying | Catching people already searching | Surround sound | Reach and recall | Retargeting named accounts only |
Targeting | Company and job title | Keywords | Needs an enriched list (5% match with corporate emails, 25 to 30% enriched) | Broad | Can't match company emails |
How you measure | Company engagements, ABM stages, deal attribution | Search terms report | Direct traffic rise | Hold-out test, 80/20 | Retargeting clicks |
Verdict | The anchor; ZenABM from $59/month, G2 5.0/5 from 6 reviews | Add after LinkedIn | Add when LinkedIn is saturated | Only with a hold-out | First to retire |
Splitting credit is a dead end, so the question changes from "which channel caused it?" to "what touched the deal?". ZenABM's deal attribution shows the ad touchpoints behind every deal, before it opened and before it closed, so you can see whether ads accelerated it.
Split the audience into just two groups, cold and warm, and plan every channel for both.
For cold audiences I run Thought Leader Ads from the CEO, influencers and especially customers, video ads with website visits, and document ads. For warm audiences, retargeted accounts that already engaged, I use DM ads: message ads and conversation ads. At $0.40 and $0.53 per send with open rates of 48.84% and 40.9%, they are a cost-effective way to reach accounts that already know you.
Signal-based outreach belongs inside the campaign: follow up engaged accounts by email and DM, written from what they engaged with. Run paid first so the first human touch is never cold. That matters because I expect positive reply rates under 1% on cold outreach.
I also made a mistake here 😅. In Q1 2026 our automated signal-based outbound produced 58 positive replies and six figures in pipeline for about $1,850 a month. By mid-2026 I called it laborious, expensive and inconsistent, so now a human writes the follow-up.
Warm retargeting also needs a trigger: an engagement threshold, such as five display clicks or 12+ page views, before an account moves to the warm campaign.
Six steps, with foundations before spend.
Send MQL, SQL and Closed/Won back to the ad platforms, and use multi-touch or self-reported attribution, never last-click. LinkedIn's conversion window is 90 days for most conversion types and 365 days only for limited types, such as Lead and Qualified Lead, sent via the Conversions API. Google's is 90 days. Patrick Cumming from Abjuice says to fix company lists, attribution and tracking before any channel spend.
Here is the LinkedIn Campaign Manager screen where you create a Conversions API conversion:
Build it in Clay or Primer and enrich it. Ali Yildirim reports a unified list gets 90%+ match rates on LinkedIn uploads, against 60 to 70% from spreadsheets. For Meta, enrich corporate emails with personal ones to move from 5% to 25 to 30% match, then have the lead form qualify again. See how to build a target account list.
Start 60:40 toward LinkedIn. Under 80% audience penetration and a frequency of 10 over 90 days means LinkedIn has room. Patrick Cumming's gauge for Google is under 10% impression share for room, over 90% for maxed out.
Warm the master list with ads before outbound starts, so reps contact accounts that have already seen you.
Install the Insight Tag, which sees all site traffic including Google Ads. Create a website audience with URL contains source=adwords. As in Justin Rowe's setup, filter by industry, company size, job title, seniority and job function so only ICP-fit visitors remain, and retarget them for 90 days.
Follow up engaged accounts by email and DM, as in the previous section.
Setting the LinkedIn side up by hand means clicking through Campaign Manager ad set by ad set. With ZenABM's Build and manage campaigns with AI, you describe a campaign in chat and Zena builds the campaign, ad sets, targeting and ads, confirming every change before it goes live.
Start 60:40 toward LinkedIn, which is Patrick Cumming's starting point, then put 80% of the LinkedIn money on cold audiences and 20% on warm. Here is a $5,000 month:
Line | Calculation | Monthly budget |
|---|---|---|
60% of $5,000 | $3,000 | |
LinkedIn cold | 80% of $3,000 | $2,400 |
LinkedIn warm | 20% of $3,000 | $600 |
Google, high-intent exact match | 40% of $5,000 | $2,000 |
Keep Google on high-intent search and bid on your own brand keyword, since people who saw your LinkedIn ads will search for you. At the median cost per landing page click, $2,400 of cold budget buys roughly 157 single image clicks ($2,400 ÷ $15.26). In Thought Leader Ads it buys about 83 ($2,400 ÷ $28.73). You can plug in your own figures in the ABM budget calculator.
Don't add Reddit, YouTube or Meta until LinkedIn passes 80% penetration or Google passes 90% impression share. A LinkedIn retargeting layer starts to pay at $30K+ of monthly Google spend or healthy organic traffic.
Justin Rowe shows why. His example: $30K a month on Google gives 5,000 clicks at 2% conversion, 10 deals and a $3,000 CAC. Adding $10K of LinkedIn retargeting on the warmest 20% lifts conversion to 6%, 22 deals and a $1,818 CAC, which he calls a 36x incremental return.
Plan at least three months, and about half your average deal cycle for velocity. Afterward, cut anything with a CAC 2x the average and push 80% of the spend to what remains.
ZenABM's Dashboards show ad spend next to influenced pipeline, ROAS and pipeline per dollar out of the box, so you don't have to join spend exports to CRM deals every month.
CTV and YouTube look broken by cost per lead because nobody clicks. Fix it with a hold-out test and by watching organic search, direct traffic and reply rates. See also what a realistic LinkedIn CTR looks like.
Justin Rowe notes that healthy Google conversion rates are usually branded search. Check the search terms report first. Ivars Krutainis from Otter sees more teams scaling back Google non-brand and moving to LinkedIn.
Wait for 80%+ LinkedIn penetration or 90%+ Google impression share. Until then you are just splitting the budget thinner.
That is the 5% match path. Enrich to personal emails and get 25 to 30%.
It buys cold impressions that rarely convert, which is why I'd retire it first. Here is why display fails in ABM.
Without one, you saturate accounts that haven't earned it. Wait for five display clicks, email engagement or 12+ page views before premium LinkedIn treatment. Liam Collins from Instantly says going hard on exclusions improved conversion rates 60% overnight, and they held.
Track cost per influenced company and one company journey, and never try to split credit. A company is influenced when a channel had at least one touchpoint before the deal opened or closed. Influence is not incrementality, so for unclickable channels use the 80/20 hold-out. Kamil Rextin notes attribution heavily favours clicks, which makes unclickable channels look useless.
Touchpoints from other channels are signals, not puzzles. If an account engages with a product analytics LinkedIn ad and a competitor Google ad in the same week, it is telling you something, so act fast. That's the same reason I don't chase the 37 of 295 split. Compare LinkedIn attribution options if you need a reporting setup.
Doing this by hand means merging ad platform exports with web analytics and CRM data. Here is ZenABM's Deals view, ranking the ad sets that influenced open and closed-won deals:
Play 1: Retarget Google traffic on LinkedIn. Justin Rowe's numbers above (2% to 6% conversion, CAC $3,000 to $1,818) also let you bid higher on Google, knowing you convert on the back end.
Play 2: One list, allbound. Paid warms the list, connection requests build the same accounts' networks, exec posts reach buyers, and top posts become Thought Leader Ads for unconnected accounts. See full-stack ABM. For 2026 I set up surround sound by downloading lists from ZenABM and pushing them into other channels. Zena can build retargeting audiences from company engagement across LinkedIn and the CRM, so that step is one instruction instead of manual assembly in each platform.
Play 3: Lift tests. Chris Konowal designs four segments of similarly sized lists: Google Ads with outbound email, with LinkedIn outreach, with LinkedIn ads, and a mix. Measure surround sound by the rise in direct traffic.
ChatGPT ads are possible in theory, but custom audiences need 25,000 matched users and run only on Free and Go accounts. I haven't run direct mail yet, so I have no view on it.
Each ZenABM capability covers one step of the plan above.
Plans start at $59/month, with a 5.0/5 rating on G2 from 6 reviews. It suits in-house teams, enterprise teams and agencies (Agency plan and Agency MCP server). It runs the LinkedIn side, so if you need display or website personalisation, run it next to a display suite 😉.
Here is the Companies table, with each target account's stage and engagement:
And here is Claude using the ZenABM MCP server to pull last week’s top-performing ad sets:
See which companies and channels touch your deals
Start a free trial and connect your LinkedIn Ads account to read the full company journey in minutes.
Account based advertising is running coordinated paid ads against one named target-account list across the channels those accounts use, with LinkedIn as the precision core. One list and one message run everywhere, instead of separate campaigns per platform. ZenABM shows which companies engaged with those ads, and practitioners also call it surround sound or allbound.
Start with a 60:40 split toward LinkedIn and judge it per influenced company, not per click. Dreamdata's 2026 benchmark has LinkedIn at €70.11, Google Search at €110.37 and Meta at €128.70. In ZenABM's October 2026 data from 168 LinkedIn ad accounts, the median Thought Leader Ad CPM is $83.59 and the median single image CPM is $54.22.
LinkedIn, because it lets you match a company list against live job titles and retarget ICP-fit people. ZenABM runs that LinkedIn side. Google catches people already searching, and Meta or Reddit work as a surround layer for website-visit retargeting. Display is the channel I'd retire first, since it can't match company emails.
Not for prospecting. Display can't match company emails the way LinkedIn can, and programmatic prospecting buys cold impressions that rarely convert. The only display spend that earns its place is retargeting named accounts or website visitors, with a small share of budget.
Only as a surround layer for website-visit retargeting. Meta fails when the list is broken: Ali Yildirim reports corporate email uploads match at 5%, enriched personal emails at 25 to 30%. Fix the list before spending, and use native-feeling ads rather than polished brand assets.
Measure cost per influenced company, not CPC or CPL. A click is one touchpoint in a nine-month, 88-touchpoint decision, and you can't split credit between LinkedIn and Google. ZenABM's multi-channel attribution shows one company journey. For unclickable channels like CTV, run an 80/20 hold-out and watch outbound reply rates and direct traffic.
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