LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads have become the most effective ad format on the platform – and not even close. After analyzing 119 TLAs and over $300K in ad spend for our 2026 LinkedIn ABM Benchmarks Report, and well – writing & running them for 2+ years myself I can tell you exactly why they work and how to use them.
TLAs deliver a 2.68% median CTR (and 0.29% click through rate to landing pages – so we compare apples to apples) compared to just 0.42% for single image ads. But even with 77% cheaper per landing page click than traditional sponsored content. And they don’t only serve brand awareness purpose – one of Ali Yildrim’s clients apparently closed a $120K deal from just $2,035 in TLA spend!
So let’s see how you can use them to make your LinkedIn Ad Campaigns more success full. You’ll learn what LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads are and how to launch them through Campaign Manager, why they outperform every other ad format (2.68% CTR vs 0.42% for single image), the creative patterns that drive results, step-by-step setup instructions, and the mistakes that kill performance.
LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads are sponsored posts from individual profiles rather than company pages. They appear in the feed as regular posts from real people – with just a small “Promoted by [Company]” note underneath.
This matters because B2B buyers trust people, not logos. When a founder shares their perspective on a challenge your prospects face, it resonates in a way corporate messaging never can.
As Ali Yildirim explains: “The advantage of thought leader ads is they appear as regular posts from individuals rather than company pages. No ad badges or corporate messaging that people instinctively scroll past.”
LinkedIn offers two variations:
You can promote these post types as TLAs:
What you can’t promote: Documents, polls, multi-image posts, reshared content, or “celebrate an occasion” posts.
Our analysis of 119 TLAs compared to other LinkedIn ad formats tells the story clearly:
| Ad Format | Median CTR | Median CPC | Efficiency Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thought Leader Ads | 2.68% | $2.29 | 9.5 (highest) |
| Single Image | 0.42% | $13.23 | 3.2 |
| Carousel | 0.32% | $13.30 | 2.4 |
| Video | 0.24% | $15.61 | 1.5 (lowest) |
Key insight: TLAs deliver landing page traffic at $3.06 per click – 77% cheaper than single image ads. Reallocating budget from video to TLAs can yield 2-3x more landing page traffic for equivalent spend.
LinkedIn’s own data backs this up: they report TLAs see 2x higher click-through rates on average compared to other single-image ads with the same objective.
The performance gap isn’t random. There are structural reasons TLAs work better:
According to the 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study, 73% of B2B decision-makers say thought leadership is a more trustworthy basis for assessing a company’s capabilities than marketing materials.
When your CEO or product expert shares insights, it carries weight that a corporate ad never can.
Most B2B ads fail because they’re immediately recognizable as ads – polished, corporate, emotionally detached. TLAs blend into the feed because they’re actual posts from real people.
Philip Ilic puts it simply: “Organic content + LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads + Warm Outbound = the best go-to-market strategy for sales-led SaaS right now.”
When accounts engage with your TLAs, that’s an intent signal. You can track which companies are clicking and commenting, then trigger personalized outbound to warm prospects.
Philip describes the workflow: “Run ~5 Thought Leader Ads to your ICP. Work from a list of about 1,000 companies. Watch the ‘Companies’ tab inside your ad account, see which companies are clicking, commenting, engaging. Export that list, upload to Clay, enrich with contacts, warm outbound.”
In ZenABM, I built this workflow directly into the product. When accounts engage with your TLAs, we track which companies engaged, assign intent labels, and can trigger webhooks for immediate outbound sequences.
Here’s the complete process for creating your first TLA campaign:
In Campaign Manager, you can only use two objectives for TLAs:
Philip tested both extensively: “I analysed 300k worth of TLA data. When optimising for Engagement, the average CPC to the landing page was 4.80, compared to 7.90-12+ for Brand Awareness – up to 2x more efficient.”
My recommendation: Use Engagement objective for most TLA campaigns.
Select either “Single image ad” or “Video ad” depending on the content you plan to promote.
Note: Authors can revoke permission at any time, which immediately turns off the ad.
Set your audience targeting, daily budget, and schedule as you would for any LinkedIn campaign. I recommend minimum $50-100/day per TLA campaign to get meaningful data.
Launch your campaign and monitor performance in Campaign Manager. Check the “Companies” tab to see which accounts are engaging.
Our analysis of 119 TLAs identified clear patterns separating top performers (2.00%+ CTR) from underperformers.
| Pattern | Top Performers | Bottom Performers |
|---|---|---|
| Voice | First-person “I” (65%) | Corporate “we” (45%) |
| Link Placement | Bottom 25% of text (75%) | Mid-text placement |
| Character Length | 1,000-1,500 characters | Too short or too long |
| Opening Hook | Specific pain point (65%) | Generic statements |
| Social Proof | Concrete metrics (45%) | Vague claims |
| CTA Type | Specific resource/link | Webinar CTAs (0% in top 20) |
Gabriel Ehrlich from Remotion puts it bluntly: “We treat creative as a strategic lever, not a design task – the ‘who this resonates with’ is the whole game in B2B. We make ads sound like humans, not AI slop.”
Tim Davidson shared a powerful insight: “Demos from LinkedIn thought leader ads went from ZERO a month to 6+ a month. 8 turned into opps and 1 closed won. All from one small change: editing the post and adding a CTA link.”
This aligns with our data: 75% of top-performing TLAs place their links in the bottom 25% of the text – after the value has been delivered.
Our analysis also identified anti-patterns that kill TLA performance:
Maximilian Herczeg advises: “Don’t run just 1 post as a campaign. Better: 4 to 6 variants with different content. This gives you comparison data and nurtures the audience with multiple perspectives.”
Multiple experts agree: no hashtags in TLAs. Gabriel Ehrlich: “Don’t use hashtags in TLA. We pay to reach the right people – hashtags are unnecessary if your targeting is set up correctly.”
Gabriel calls this out directly: “The whole post smells of AI – the em dashes, the vocabulary – it’s all AI. We make ads sound like humans, not AI slop.”
Philip found this pattern: “Most people are boosting the wrong content. Posts that do well organically aren’t always the ones that convert in paid. You need posts that directly address your target audience’s pain points.”
Tim Davidson’s experience: Adding a CTA link took demos from zero to 6+ per month. Always include a clear next step.
Zero of our top 20 TLAs used webinar CTAs. 20% of the bottom 20 did. Offer specific resources instead.
The most common TLA mistake is budget dilution. Here’s how to structure campaigns:
Philip explains the math: “Make sure your budget matches your audience size. If you’re spending 2k/month and your audience is 300k people, no one’s seeing your stuff.”
Philip recommends a three-tier structure:
“I set up accounts mostly with 3 campaign groups: Prospecting, Nurture, and Convert.
1. Prospecting – Cold campaigns designed to reach new, relevant audiences and feed your retargeting pools.
2. Nurture – Middle-of-funnel campaigns focused on education, brand, and credibility. Zero-click TLAs.
3. Convert – Retarget Thought Leader Ad engagement with conversation ads. This combo is fire.”
Not all TLAs perform equally. There are clear patterns separating top performers (≥2.00% CTR) from bottom performers (based on our analysis in this report) – I’ve generated the “perfect TLA” based on all these patterns (I will show you some *real* examples of great TLAs that really worked for us below too):
TL;DR – TLAs work when they sound…authentic and human:
The winners are long-form (1–1.5k characters), and structured as “problem – solution” story. The best-performing linkedin TLAs also contain specific worksflows (esp those workflow graphics!) and metrics and specific free offers – but not webinars, not brand fluff, just clear value, proof, and a confident “here’s what to do next 👇”.
Winning elements of successful TLAs:
Here are the results of our top performing LinkedIn TLAs – and the examples of the ads below. Which patterns could you detect?
| Pattern | Top Performers | Bottom Performers |
|---|---|---|
| Voice | First-person “I” (65%) | Corporate “we” (45%) |
| Link Placement | Bottom 25% of text (75%) | Mid-text placement |
| Character Length | 1,000-1,500 characters | Too short or too long |
| Opening Hook | Specific pain point (65%) | Generic statements |
| Social Proof | Concrete metrics (45%) | Vague claims |
| CTA Type | Specific resource/link | Webinar CTAs (0% in top 20) |
The winning hook pattern: “I’ve seen so many businesses still running operations on Excel spreadsheets. It works, until it doesn’t.”
Gabriel Ehrlich from Remotion puts it bluntly: “We treat creative as a strategic lever, not a design task-the ‘who this resonates with’ is the whole game in B2B. We make ads sound like humans, not AI slop.”
Our analysis of 119 TLAs compared to other ad formats tells the story:
| Ad Format | Median CTR | Median CPC | Efficiency Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thought Leader Ads | 2.68% | $2.29 | 9.5 (highest) |
| Single Image | 0.42% | $13.23 | 3.2 |
| Carousel | 0.32% | $13.30 | 2.4 |
| Video | 0.24% | $15.61 | 1.5 (lowest) |
Key insight: TLAs deliver the most cost-effective landing page traffic at $3.06 per click-77% cheaper than single image ads. Reallocating budget from video to TLAs can yield 2-3x more landing page traffic for equivalent spend.
Now you know how to create perfect TLAs – here’s what performance benchmarks you should aim for: Across the top-performing TLAs, overall CTR ranges from 4.49% to 17.39% (with an 8.32% average), which already puts them miles ahead of most sponsored formats.
But the real signal is downstream: landing page CTR sits between 0.81% and 3.42% (avg 1.18%), while the median LP CTR is 0.35%.
Ali Yildirim shared this result: “We just closed a $120K ACV contract with a publicly traded company off $2,035.17 in spend on a Thought Leader ad.”
The key? “Most people think success with Thought Leader ads comes down to budget or optimization tricks. That’s not where this gets won or lost. Write content people actually want to read.”
Philip Ilic tested a concentrated TLA strategy: “This month we spent more and the budget was super concentrated on just one ad initiative: Thought leader ad to landing page (asking for email) to ridiculously strong follow-up. Our cost per call dropped by close to half.”
Tim Davidson’s optimization: “Demos from LinkedIn thought leader ads went from ZERO a month to 6+ a month. 8 turned into opps and 1 closed won. All from one small change: editing the post and adding a CTA link.”
Philip identifies the core challenge: “Most people fail with LinkedIn Ads because they can’t track influenced pipeline. If you’re spending budget on content + distribution with LinkedIn ads, and can’t prove it’s influencing pipeline or revenue… your boss (or client) will shift budget to Google Ads.”
The solution is connecting TLA engagement to pipeline. In ZenABM, I built this workflow:
Based on our analysis of 119 LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads:
Ready to run LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads that drive pipeline? Try ZenABM free for 37 days and see which accounts engage with your TLAs.
Our data shows TLAs have a median CPC of $2.29 – significantly lower than single image ads ($13.23) or video ($15.61). Budget minimum $1,500-3,000/month per campaign for meaningful results.
You need access to LinkedIn Campaign Manager. You can promote posts from employees (no permission needed beyond standard setup) or from 1st/2nd degree connections (requires their explicit approval).
Regular LinkedIn ads promote content from company pages. TLAs promote posts from individual profiles. They appear more organic and drive significantly higher engagement.
Engagement. Analysis of 300K in spend showed Engagement delivers CPCs up to 2x cheaper than Brand Awareness for landing page traffic.
LinkedIn’s Companies tab in Campaign Manager shows aggregate engagement. For CRM integration and ABM stage tracking, use a tool like ZenABM that syncs company-level engagement data to HubSpot or Salesforce.
