# LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads: The Ultimate Guide for 2026 > LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads have become the most effective ad format on the platform – and not even close. Author: Emilia Korczynska Published: 2026-01-23 Updated: 2026-10-21 Categories: Ad Formats & Creatives Source: https://zenabm.com/blog/linkedin-thought-leader-ads-ultimate-guide --- ![Cover for the LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads 2026 guide, showing a card comparing $3.06 vs $13.23 cost per landing page click and the best Valueships TLA metrics.](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/linkedin-thought-leader-ads-ultimate-guide-cover-20261016-1214.png) LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads (TLAs) put ad spend behind posts from real people instead of your company page, and they are the format I would start most B2B LinkedIn accounts on. This guide covers how to write them, where the posts come from, the best examples with their numbers, and what they really cost. The data comes from our [2026 LinkedIn ABM Benchmarks Report](/linkedin-abm-benchmarks-report), which analysed 119 TLAs and over $300K in ad spend, plus more than two years of writing and running them myself. ## LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads: quick summary - **How to write one:** Write in the first person, open with a pain or a mistake, and tell a story of 1,000 to 1,500 characters. Then put the link in the bottom 25% of the text, as 75% of our top performers do. - **Where the posts come from:** Use your CEO and employees (match the voice to the persona), customers with case studies, and B2B influencers. At Userpilot, about 50% of our TLAs come from influencers and about 30% from internal stakeholders. - **Best examples:** The six ads below come from six different industries, and the strongest of them reached a 5.58% CTR to landing page. Our [gallery of top performing TLAs](/best-linkedin-thought-leader-ads-examples-gallery) has 43 ads with their metrics, and the best Valueships TLA reached a 20.92% CTR, a 4.69% eCTR and $0.10 per landing page click. - **What they cost:** TLA CTR counts every click (likes, comments, shares, "see more"), while single image CTR counts landing page clicks only, so you should compare eCTR and eCPC. Our early 2026 benchmark shows $3.06 per landing page click vs $13.23 for single image, but Philip Ilic's newer analysis shows TLAs getting more expensive. - **The landing page hack:** Edit the organic post a few days after posting and add your landing page link. Tim Davidson reports a client going from zero demos a month to 6+ with this one change. - **Objective and budget:** Start with Engagement and test Brand Awareness against it, because there is no professional consensus. Budget $50 to $100/day per campaign ($1,500 to $3,000/month) and run 4 to 6 posts. - **Limits:** You can promote text, single image, video, article and newsletter posts, but not documents, polls or multi-image posts. LinkedIn lists no lead generation or Website Visits objective for TLAs. - **In [ZenABM](https://app.zenabm.com/signup):** Company engagements shows every company that engaged with your TLAs, even if nobody liked the post, and the dashboards calculate eCTR and eCPC out of the box (plans start at $59/month billed annually). ### TLA examples at a glance These six ads come from our [TLA gallery](/best-linkedin-thought-leader-ads-examples-gallery), each from a different industry. Scroll sideways through the cards, then compare them in the table below. CTR counts every click on the post, including "see more" and reactions, so the column to compare is CTR to landing page:
Falk Schubert for Hawk · 5.5% CTR · 5.58% CTR to landing page
Falk Schubert for Hawk · 5.5% CTR · 5.58% CTR to landing page
Steve Dickenson for Ecologi · 28.5% CTR · 11.2s dwell time
Steve Dickenson for Ecologi · 28.5% CTR · 11.2s dwell time
Steve Armenti for twelfth agency · 4.7% CTR · 2.75% CTR to landing page
Steve Armenti for twelfth agency · 4.7% CTR · 2.75% CTR to landing page
Tarek A. for Stuut · 13% CTR · 1.44% CTR to landing page
Tarek A. for Stuut · 13% CTR · 1.44% CTR to landing page
Paul Ben for Archive · 14.6% CTR · 0.48% CTR to landing page
Paul Ben for Archive · 14.6% CTR · 0.48% CTR to landing page
J Zac Stein for Span · 8.9% CTR · 1.02% CTR to landing page
J Zac Stein for Span · 8.9% CTR · 1.02% CTR to landing page
| Ad | Opening line | CTR | CTR to landing page | | Falk Schubert for Hawk (AML compliance) | "The economics of AML compliance are broken." | 5.5% | 5.58% | | Steve Dickenson for Ecologi (climate) | "This photo proves two things:" | 28.5% | Not on the card (11.2s dwell time) | | Steve Armenti for twelfth agency (ABM agency) | "Head of Marketing. Team = you + 2 people." | 4.7% | 2.75% | | Tarek A. for Stuut (finance software) | "Michael Scarpelli joined Snowflake as CFO in 2019 on a $300k base salary." | 13% | 1.44% | | Paul Ben for Archive (creator marketing) | "L'Oreal told me influencer marketing IS their entire marketing budget." | 14.6% | 0.48% | | J Zac Stein for Span (developer tools) | "If you've ever had your CEO or board ask: "How much of our code being written is AI-generated?" you're not alone." | 8.9% | 1.02% | Archive's ad shows why: a 14.6% CTR looks great, but only 0.48% of the people who saw it went to the landing page. ### Free resources - [LinkedIn TLA generator](/free-tools/tla-generator): an AI tool that generates Thought Leader Ad copy in seconds. - [Best LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads examples gallery](/best-linkedin-thought-leader-ads-examples-gallery): real TLAs with their click-through rates, which you can browse for structure and hooks. - [TLA Bootcamp](/tla-bootcamp): the free recordings of our June 2026 event on why TLAs work, how to write them and how to measure them. ## What are LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads (thought leadership ads)? LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads are sponsored posts from individual profiles rather than company pages, and they are sometimes called thought leadership ads. They look like regular LinkedIn posts but reach your target audience through paid promotion, with only a small "Promoted by [Company]" note underneath. This matters because B2B buyers trust people, not logos. As [Ali Yildirim explains](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aayildirim_weve-spent-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-activity-7359523260633423872-rZPt): "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." ### Two types of LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads - **Employee TLAs:** you promote posts from people at your company, and no partnership label is required. - **Third-party TLAs:** you promote posts from customers, partners, industry experts or creators. This needs the author's permission, and a partnership label if they are compensated. LinkedIn introduced TLAs in 2023 for employee posts only. In March 2024 it expanded them to posts from any LinkedIn member who gives you permission. ### Supported content formats You can promote text-only posts, single image posts, native video posts, articles and newsletters, and posts with third-party links. You cannot promote documents, polls, multi-image posts, reshared content or "celebrate an occasion" posts. ### Supported objectives The objective depends on the post type, according to [LinkedIn's help page](https://www.linkedin.com/help/lms/answer/a1399568). Video Views only works when the promoted post is a video, and Website Visits is not available because a TLA post does not have to contain a URL. You may hear that a lead generation objective is coming soon. LinkedIn's help page lists none for any TLA post type today, so I would not plan around it. Here is the objective support by post type at a glance: ![Table of Thought Leader Ad objectives by post type; website visits and lead generation are not available](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/linkedin-thought-leader-ads-ultimate-guide-thought-leader-ad-objectives-by-post-type.png) ### Thought Leader Ads specs and restrictions Check these before you pick a post: | Spec | What LinkedIn allows | | Ad format | Single image, video or event ad | | Content source | An existing organic post from a personal profile | | Author approval | Required for third-party posts, and the author can revoke it at any time, which switches the ad off | | CTA button | Not available for single image or video TLAs, but you can add URLs to the intro text | | Editing | You cannot edit the post from the ad, so edit the organic post itself | | Visibility | The post must be public and the member's profile must show their full name | | Recommended length | 1,000 to 1,500 characters (our recommendation, not a LinkedIn rule) | A TLA does not need an image or a video. A text-only post works fine, because the format promotes whatever the person published. ## Why LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads outperform other formats (and when they don't) TLAs work because the viewer sees a person first, not a logo, and reads the post like any other post in the feed. There are three structural reasons, and then there are the cases where they don't work. ### People trust people, not brands 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. The same logic applies to who writes the post: the CEO talks best to CEOs, and a senior product manager talks best to product managers. Our [TLA gallery](/best-linkedin-thought-leader-ads-examples-gallery) has plenty of TLAs written by founders and CEOs. Here is one from Marc Woodland, CEO of Winbox, who opens with the pushback every agency hears, "Our CEO will never post on Linkedin.", and argues that they should. It reached a 10.4% CTR and a 0.98% CTR to landing page: ![LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad by Marc Woodland, CEO of Winbox, arguing that CEOs should post on LinkedIn, with 10.4% CTR](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/tla-gallery-marc-woodland-ceo-on-linkedin-card.png) ### They don't look like ads Most B2B ads fail because people recognise them as ads immediately: they are polished, corporate and emotionally detached. TLAs blend into the feed because they are real posts from real people. [Philip Ilic puts it simply](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philip-ilic_organic-content-linkedin-thought-leader-activity-7392504559790796800-WgFb): "Organic content + LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads + Warm Outbound = the best go-to-market strategy for sales-led SaaS right now." Here is Philip's post promoting a Loom video, an example of the organic-plus-paid approach: ![LinkedIn Ads specialist Philip Ilic's post promoting a Loom video, a thought leader post example for LinkedIn ABM](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Phillip-Ilic-thought-leader-ads.png) ### They give you an intent signal When a company engages with your TLA, you know a real person at that account reacted to your content, so you can follow up while the account is warm. [Philip describes the workflow](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philip-ilic_linkedinads-demandgen-leadgen-activity-7384873723016765440-_LXc): "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." ZenABM does this at company level. It tracks TLA engagement per company even when nobody likes or comments, and it can push engaged accounts to Clay over webhooks. ### When they don't work TLAs are not a replacement for conversion ads. They warm accounts, and a retargeted single image or video ad with a specific CTA does the asking. They also fit badly in three situations: - **Nobody posts:** getting people to write is the real constraint. Gabriel Ehrlich says the bottleneck is often the CEO, so with no poster, single image ads scale more easily. - **Budget under $1,500/month:** you will not collect enough data to learn anything. - **Slow creative rotation:** TLAs are the fastest-decaying LinkedIn ad format, so you need fresh posts often. Once someone has seen a post once or twice, they won't read it again. ## LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads performance: the data TLA CTR counts every click on the ad (likes, comments, shares and "see more"), while single image ad CTR counts landing page clicks only. A 2.68% TLA CTR next to a 0.42% single image CTR is therefore not a fair comparison. The fair comparison is eCTR (effective CTR, landing page clicks divided by impressions) and eCPC (effective CPC, spend divided by landing page clicks). Here are our median benchmarks on that basis, from 2,828 ads across 211 companies in our early 2026 benchmark: | Metric | Thought Leader Ads | Single image ads | | Median cost per landing page click (eCPC) | $3.06 | $13.23 | | Median CPM | $49.37 | $59.15 | | Median dwell time | 6.63 seconds | 3.64 seconds | | Efficiency score (out of 10) | 9.5 | 3.2 | An eCPC of $3.06 is 77% cheaper than single image, and the longer dwell time means people actually read the post. TLA CTR and CPC measured on all clicks (a 2.68% median CTR and a $2.29 median CPC) are real, but you can only compare them with other TLAs. Here is the benchmark table from the report: ![ZenABM benchmark table for LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads showing 119 TLAs with a 3.40% average CTR](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/ZenABM-thought-leader-ads-performance-benchmarks.png) ### How to calculate eCTR and eCPC Campaign Manager doesn't show eCTR or eCPC, so you have to calculate them yourself: 1. Open the Engagement report (not the Performance tab) and note the "Clicks to landing page" column. 1. Divide landing page clicks by impressions to get eCTR. 1. Divide spend by landing page clicks to get eCPC. ZenABM calculates both out of the box, TLAs included. A TLA with no link in the post produces zero landing page clicks, so analyse TLAs with and without links separately. ### Cost: TLAs are effective, but getting expensive The $3.06 above is a median from early 2026, and costs have moved since. Philip Ilic's newer analysis found TLAs at $25.21 per landing page click vs $11.80 for single image, which is 2.2x more expensive, and TLAs were cheaper in only 34 of 173 accounts. 😬 His [research with Kiin](https://kiin.co/research/linkedin-thought-leader-ads-benchmarks) also shows that the best 25% of accounts pay $10.82 or less per landing page click, so the spread between accounts is huge. Kiin's [2026 benchmark panel](https://kiin.co/linkedin-ads-benchmarks) puts single image TLAs at $25.02 per landing page click and video TLAs at $73.56. My own Userpilot data tells the same story of "it depends on your posts". TLAs with a link in the post body had a 0.90% eCTR and $12.73 eCPC vs 0.43% and $13.71 for image ads. But only six TLAs without links pushed the format average up to $16.30, [as I shared on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/emiliakorczynska_liam-collins-recently-wrote-that-thought-activity-7463932350213701632-QC5_). Cost also depends on the campaign objective, and there is no consensus. In Kiin's paired data, cost per landing page click was a tie ($17.24 for Brand Awareness vs $17.22 for Engagement, 36 pairs). Brand Awareness reached 77% more people per dollar, and Engagement got 88% more engagements. In my recent Userpilot experiments, Brand Awareness gave better CTR and cheaper landing page clicks, while Philip's earlier $300K analysis (in Step 1 below) favoured Engagement. Scaling fast makes costs worse too. Across 940 campaigns, Kiin found that doubling a campaign's spend makes each landing page click cost 26% more, and quadrupling it makes it 66% more. So raise budgets gradually and track eCPC weekly. ## Where to source Thought Leader Ads: employees, customers and influencers You need a steady supply of posts, and the three sources are your internal people, your customers and B2B influencers. At Userpilot, roughly 50% of our TLAs come from influencers, roughly 30% from internal stakeholders, and only 10 to 20% from customers, as I said in our [webinar on building a deliberate TLA programme](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm6Zie2f1W8). ### Your CEO and internal employees Internal stakeholders are our second best performing source, with one condition: the voice must match the persona. The CEO talks to CEOs, and the head of product talks to product managers, as I explained in our [webinar on recruiting contributors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zguJFvVnn4). At Userpilot, a product manager's post about their own mistakes reached an 8.7% CTR. Don't expect executives to write the posts themselves. Interview them regularly and give them a finished draft to tweak in their own style, because otherwise the TLAs will not happen. About $45,000 a month of our Userpilot ad spend goes to TLAs from internal stakeholders. ### Your customers Customers with case studies tell strong, authentic stories about why they use you, and Tim Davidson says about 99% say yes when asked. Our own customer advocacy programme has not been very successful, so make it a deliberate programme with an incentive instead of an ad hoc ask. ### B2B influencers An influencer your audience respects can vouch for you with receipts and data, and people trust that. In an experiment splitting TLA budget between internal stakeholders, influencers and customers, the influencer ads performed better than all other TLAs, as I showed in the [TLA Bootcamp keynotes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4rs-eB1gMM). We promoted five influencers sourced through [Passionfroot](https://www.passionfroot.me/), spending about $6,000 on the posts and another $7,000 on ads. You pay for an influencer post once and you can promote it indefinitely, so the benefit keeps accruing. I covered the details in my [LinkedIn post on why I'm bullish on TLAs](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/emiliakorczynska_why-im-bullish-on-tlas-in-q2-how-were-activity-7445864004352270336-7bRk). Here is what you need to know about the two sourcing options: - **Passionfroot:** it is a platform where creators and companies handle sponsorships, bookings and payments, and its Discovery function helps you source creators. It is strongest for newsletters, podcasts and YouTube, so the supply of LinkedIn posts is thinner. It charges creators nothing to sign up and adds a 2% transaction fee covered by the brand, while brand-side pricing is not published. - [**CreatorWorks](https://www.creator-works.com/):** it is a London agency for B2B SaaS and AI companies that runs creator content plus paid amplification through TLAs. Its pricing is not published. LinkedIn also launched Creator Marketplace in Campaign Manager in June 2026, but it is in alpha, limited to the US and Canada, and only supports English-language content. ### Promote what already works Before you spend on ads, look for posts that already perform well organically and ask the author to amplify them. If your people won't post, ask them to post first and then sponsor their posts from the backend. ## How to set up LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads: step by step A TLA is not created in Campaign Manager. The author publishes an organic post first, and you promote it by adding it to a campaign whose ad format matches the post. ### Step 1: Choose your campaign objective Pick **Brand awareness** or **Engagement** (and **Video views** for video posts). As we discussed above, there's no professional consensus on which objective works better. Philip analysed the numbers on one side of that debate. [Philip Ilic tested both](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philip-ilic_should-you-optimise-for-brand-awareness-or-activity-7389242953635991552-QN9k): "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 is to start with Engagement, then test Brand Awareness against it with the same posts and compare eCPC. Here is the objective selection in Campaign Manager: ![LinkedIn Campaign Manager highlighting Brand awareness and Engagement as valid Thought Leader Ad objectives](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/LinkedIn-Though-Leader-Ad-acceptable-campaign-objectives-ZenABM.png) ### Step 2: Set up your ad format Select "Single image ad", "Video ad" or "Event ad", depending on the post you plan to promote. A text-only or single image post uses the single image type. ### Step 3: Browse for content to promote 1. Click "Browse existing content". 1. Click "LinkedIn members" to search for posts. 1. Search by member name, and you can find posts from employees or 1st and 2nd degree connections. 1. Select the post you want to promote. Here is the member search in ZenABM's Content Library: ![Search authors post linkedin TLAs ZenABM](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Search-authors-post-linkedin-TLAs-.png) ### Step 4: Request permission 1. Click "Request approval" on the post you want to sponsor. 1. The author gets a notification and can approve or deny. 1. Once approved, the post appears in your available creative. Authors can revoke permission at any time, which immediately turns off the ad. This is the Content Library with a post selected to sponsor: ![LinkedIn Campaign Manager Content Library with a post selected to sponsor as a Thought Leader Ad](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/select-the-post-you-want-to-sponsor-.png) ### Step 5: Configure targeting, bidding and budget Set your audience, daily budget and schedule as for any LinkedIn campaign, and keep each audience above LinkedIn's 300-member minimum. Budget $50 to $100/day per TLA campaign. Turn off Audience Expansion and the LinkedIn Audience Network, and use manual bidding that starts 30% below the recommended range. ZenABM's Budget Savers keeps the first two off on every ad set, including ones you create later. ### Step 6: Launch and monitor Launch the campaign and check the Engagement report for clicks to landing page. Here are TLA engagement metrics in Campaign Manager: ![LinkedIn Campaign Manager thought leader ad results with clicks to landing page column highlighted](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/TLA-engagement-clicks-to-LP-1-1-scaled.png) ## LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads best practices: how to write them Our analysis of 119 TLAs separates top performers (2.00%+ CTR) from underperformers. Here is what they have in common: | 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 to 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 or link | Webinar CTAs (0% in top 20) | Here is a summary of the best practices and pitfalls we see: ![Infographic of TLA writing best practices: five do and avoid examples for LinkedIn thought leader ads](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/TLA-writing-best-practices.png) ### Tips from our TLA Bootcamp talks The TLA Bootcamp was an event ZenABM ran in June 2026, where we analysed 50+ TLAs submitted by LinkedIn ad experts, showed them with their CTR, eCTR and dwell time in an art gallery, and ran talks on why TLAs perform so well. These are the points I make in them: - **Find a credible voice.** In our talk on [why TLAs are the most effective LinkedIn ad format](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaN6cCjJF18), I call this the most important part of the playbook. You want an influencer or internal stakeholder your audience finds relatable, such as demand gen marketers following other demand gen marketers. - **Use organic performance as your benchmark.** Post without a link first, wait a few days, and promote only the posts that took off with comments and likes. - **Focus on one idea.** In [our webinar on writing great TLAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqlNRLmdPp8), I recommend avoiding feature dumps and keeping any product mention subtle and tied to the story. - **Be contrarian and specific.** Use real lessons, numbers and screenshots of results, because people are losing trust in what they read on LinkedIn. - **Lead with a story, never a pitch.** Talk about a mistake, or about how you blew a budget on an experiment, or lead with real numbers. - **Treat generators as a starting point.** Don't paste AI output straight into LinkedIn. Gabriel Ehrlich of Remotion says: "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." ![LinkedIn post by Gabriel Ehrlich explaining why Thought Leader Ads work best for B2B SaaS clients](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Gabriel-Erlich-TLAs.png) ### How to write the perfect TLA: structure and checklist The winners are long-form (1,000 to 1,500 characters) and built as a "problem and solution" story. Our [analysis of top performers](/linkedin-abm-benchmarks-report/linkedin-tla-patterns) gives this structure and character budget: 1. **Hook (50 to 100 characters):** a relatable pain, such as "I've seen so many businesses still running operations on Excel spreadsheets. It works, until it doesn't." 1. **Backstory (300 to 500 characters):** your personal experience. 1. **Problem detail (200 to 300 characters):** the specific issue. 1. **Solution (300 to 400 characters):** the product plus 3 to 4 benefits. 1. **Social proof (100 to 200 characters):** metrics or a customer name. 1. **CTA (50 to 100 characters):** a direct command plus the link, ideally a specific free offer and not a webinar. Here is a generated example that follows the pattern, with a story hook and a free implementation offer: ![LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad by Jane Doe of Acme Inc. with a story hook and free implementation offer](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Sample-LinkedIn-TLA-best-performing-patterns-ZenABM.png) You can use this checklist directly in your Claude to generate your next winning TLA in your own style. The [/abm-campaign-execution skill](https://github.com/ZENABM/linkedin-abm-skills/tree/main/skills/abm-campaign-execution) generates LinkedIn ad copy, creative briefs and mockups that are ready to launch. Our [TLA generator](/free-tools/tla-generator) does a quick version in the browser. ### Add a landing page link in your post body There's a very simple hack that can really boost your TLA performance: edit your organic post a few days after posting and add your landing page link to the body. [Tim Davidson, one of the most recognisable LinkedIn Ads experts, has reported this too](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tadavidson41_demos-from-linkedin-thought-leader-ads-activity-7394746080606928896-1QxA): "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." Here is Tim's post: ![Tim Davidson's LinkedIn post showing thought leader ad demos rising after adding a CTA link to the ad post](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Tim-Davidson-Thought-Leader-Ads.png) A link doesn't hurt paid reach the way it hurts organic reach, and it lets you track landing page clicks. Place it after the value has been delivered, like the 75% of top performers that put it in the bottom 25% of the text. ## Best LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad examples with performance data We keep a [gallery of top performing TLAs with their metrics](/best-linkedin-thought-leader-ads-examples-gallery), built from the TLA Bootcamp submissions, and you can browse it or submit your own. 👀 Below are examples with the numbers we have on record. We don't have per-ad CPC and dwell time for all of them. For reference, our top TLAs hit 9 seconds of dwell time vs 6 seconds for top single image ads. ### Valueships: the "skinny jeans" hook Valueships, a SaaS pricing agency, targeted senior SaaS executives in the US, UK and DACH. The post opened "Millennials: skinny jeans are still cool! (they're not). SaaS: seat-based pricing is still cool! (it's not)". It reached 20.92% CTR, 4.69% eCTR and 1,394 landing page clicks at $0.10 each. Here is Valueships' TLAs in LinkedIn's Ad Library: ![LinkedIn Ad Library showing 20 promoted Valueships ads, the Thought Leader Ads used in this case study](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Valueships-linkedin-ads-library.png) **Why it worked:** - It used a pattern-break hook instead of a generic statement. - It stuck to one clear idea, not a feature list. - The message was built for one audience, senior SaaS executives. ### Valueships: the real-numbers hook A second post led with a real company and a concrete number: Amos Bar-Joseph at Swan AI paid Anthropic $51,217 in one month, then asked a provocative question about pricing. It reached 21.03% CTR, 3.02% eCTR and 141 landing page clicks at $0.02 each. This is the invoice-proof TLA in the gallery: ![LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad from Valueships showing a $51,217 Anthropic invoice shared by a founder as social proof](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Valueships-top-performing-TLA-2.png) **Why it worked:** - It used concrete metrics as social proof, which 45% of top performers do. - It opened with a specific pain point. - The question landed the pricing angle. ### Our ABM results story A TLA telling the personal story of reaching $650K in pipeline from ABM ads in about a quarter reached a 17.4% CTR and a 3.4% eCTR, which means very cheap clicking. Here is the post: ![LinkedIn thought leader ad example promoting ZenABM, with a dashboard of accounts moving through ABM stages](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Top-Performing-Linkedin-TLA-example-4-ZenABM.png) **Why it worked:** - It was a first-person story with specific results. - It had a workflow-style graphic with metrics. - The link was placed naturally as part of the story. ### A peer's voice: the product manager post When we targeted product managers at Userpilot, a product manager from our team posted about product mistakes, drafted for them from their own experience. It reached an 8.7% overall CTR. **Why it worked:** - The author and audience matched, so the reader thought "someone like me is saying this". - It was a vulnerable, first-person mistake story. ### "I made all the ABM mistakes" One of my own posts hooks with a personal transformation story that shares a pain. Its gallery card shows a 4.4% CTR, 521 clicks to the landing page and a 0.95% CTR to landing page. ![LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad by Emilia Korczynska listing ABM mistakes, promoted as a ZenABM partnership post](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Top-Performing-Linkedin-TLA-example-3-ZenABM.png) **Why it worked:** - It used a vulnerability hook, which I recommend for TLAs. - It was written in a first-person voice. Here is another of our top performing TLAs, from my Userpilot account: ![LinkedIn thought leader ad by Emilia Korczynska of Userpilot, a top-performing TLA example for ZenABM](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Top-Performing-Linkedin-TLA-example-2-ZenABM.png) ### Gameball: a two-line post Most of our top performers run 1,000 to 1,500 characters, but short can work when the one fact is strong enough. Ahmed Khairy, CEO of Gameball, opened with "If you've received a reward while buying groceries in Saudi Arabia, there's a 33% chance it was powered by Gameball." and added a one-line PS about what Gameball does. It reached a 12.1% CTR and a 2.21% CTR to landing page: ![LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad by Ahmed Khairy, CEO of Gameball, a two-line post with 12.1% CTR and 2.21% CTR to landing page](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/tla-gallery-tarek-reda-gameball-loyalty-card.png) **Why it worked:** - One specific, surprising number did the work of a whole story. - The PS says what the company does in one line, after the reader is already interested. ### Farseer: a story from a customer conversation Matej Trbara, co-founder of Farseer, opened with "Last week a pharma CFO told me they ran their entire H1 forecast on one scenario." and only brought Farseer in after explaining why finance teams end up there. It reached an 11.3% CTR and a 0.85% CTR to landing page: ![LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad by Matej Trbara, co-founder of Farseer, about pharma CFOs forecasting on one scenario, with 11.3% CTR](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/tla-gallery-andrija-s-uberic-pharma-scenarios-card.png) **Why it worked:** - The hook is something a buyer said, so the target reader recognises their own situation. - It follows the problem and solution structure, with the product only in the second half. ### SalesCaptain: lots of comments, few visits Bill Stathopoulos's post for SalesCaptain shared a Clay workflow and asked readers to comment to get the Clay table. It collected 505 comments, but reached a 3.1% CTR and a 0.37% CTR to landing page: ![LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad by Bill Stathopoulos of SalesCaptain about a Clay backlink workflow, with 505 comments and 3.1% CTR](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/tla-gallery-bill-stathopoulos-clay-backlinks-card.png) **What to take from it:** - A comment-for-resource ask brings engagement, and the conversation then happens in the comments and DMs, not on your landing page. - If you want landing page visits, put the link in the post, as described in the landing page hack above. ### A live teardown: two TLAs vs single image ads In our live ABM Bootcamp teardown, two TLAs and single image ads ran to the same target accounts for 48 hours. TLAs delivered 74 landing page clicks for $131.58, an eCPC of $1.78, vs 28 clicks for $269, or $9.64, for single image ads (5.4x cheaper). The text-heavy posts did better than the shorter ones. ## LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads budget and structure The most common TLA mistake is budget dilution. Plan for $50 to $100/day per campaign ($1,500 to $3,000/month), with 4 to 6 posts per campaign, though some people run 5 to 7. Aim for 3 to 5 impressions per account per week. [Philip explains the math](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philip-ilic_linkedinads-demandgen-leadgen-activity-7384873723016765440-_LXc): "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." Here are the budget and pacing formulas Ali Yildirim shares: ![Ali Yildirim LinkedIn post: formulas for ad budget pacing and how many tests a $10K monthly budget supports](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/Ali-Yildrim-Monthly-ad-budget-formula.png) ### Recommended campaign structure [Philip recommends a three-tier structure](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philip-ilic_they-have-a-million-campaign-groups-all-activity-7388867521699004416-dJJM): > "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." Here is the full-funnel framework: ![Phillip Ilic's client ad flow for LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads: reach, nurture, convert](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/linkedin-thought-leader-ads-funnel-phillip-ilic.png) ### How to calculate the budget: a $10,000/month example In a [webinar on planning ABM with AI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzgUnj5_luA), the proposed structure was: - **Cold ICP campaign ($6,000):** $3,500 goes to TLAs, $1,000 to video ads and $1,500 to right-rail ads. - **Engaged and retargeting ($4,000):** $1,000 goes to document ads, $1,500 to single image ads and $1,500 to another single image or TLA set. Rotate the TLAs instead of launching all your good organic posts together. The [ABM Budget Calculator](/free-tools/abm-budget-calculator) helps you plan your own split. ## LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads mistakes to avoid Here is a summary of the anti-patterns that kill TLA performance: ![TLA dos and don'ts](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/TLA-writing-Dos-and-Donts.png) ### Mistake 1: Running only one post per campaign [Maximilian Herczeg advises](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/maximilianherczeg_6-dinge-die-ich-immer-%C3%A4ndere-bevor-ich-activity-7381214365577789440-8No_): "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." ### Mistake 2: Using hashtags [Gabriel Ehrlich](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ehrlichgabriel_i-just-got-targeted-with-this-thought-leader-activity-7405950632714817536-oV1k) puts it like this: "Don't use hashtags in TLA. We pay to reach the right people: hashtags are unnecessary if your targeting is set up correctly." ### Mistake 3: AI-generated content 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." ### Mistake 4: Boosting the wrong content [Philip found this pattern](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philip-ilic_i-spent-16k-testing-thought-leader-ads-activity-7388601628465131521-lM4A): "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." I would still not promote posts that did not resonate organically. ### Mistake 5: No link in the post Without a link there are no landing page clicks to measure, so add one as described in the landing page hack above. ### Mistake 6: Webinar CTAs Zero of our top 20 TLAs used webinar CTAs, and 20% of the bottom 20 did. Everyone runs webinars and people won't give away their email for them, so offer a specific resource instead. ### Mistake 7: Leaving a TLA running too long Rotate by frequency, not by calendar. Tim Davidson rotates when average frequency hits 3, and Gabriel Ehrlich treats frequency 2 as the point where a TLA starts to die. ZenABM's Bidding agent flags ads whose CTR has been sliding and pauses them once you approve. ## How to measure LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads success Measure eCTR, eCPC and dwell time (calculated as described above), and then company-level engagement. [Philip identifies the core challenge](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philip-ilic_most-ppl-fail-with-linkedin-ads-because-they-activity-7387416841826111490-xwOL): "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." Campaign Manager's Companies tab shows aggregate engagement, and ZenABM goes further. Here is ZenABM's ad performance dashboard: ![ZenABM LinkedIn ABM ad report page 2 showing spend per ad format and the top engaged companies by clicks](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/ZenABM-LinkedIn-ABM-Ad-Report-page-2.png) I asked Zena, ZenABM's AI agent, which ad formats the accounts I opened deals with had engaged with most. The overwhelming majority of engagements came from TLAs, which I used to defend the spend. In companies Userpilot opened qualified deals with over two months, TLAs drove 316 clicks vs 12 for image ads. You can also retarget website visitors through the Insight Tag, or push engaged accounts to Clay for outbound. ## Thought Leader Ads benchmarks: what good looks like Across top-performing TLAs, overall CTR (all clicks) ranges from 4.49% to 17.39% with an 8.32% average. For a TLA on the Engagement objective, 7% is already good and above 10% is very strong. The real signal is downstream. Among top performers, eCTR sits between 0.81% and 3.42% (1.18% average, 0.35% median), while across all 119 TLAs the median is 0.29%. An eCTR above 1.2% to 2% is very solid, and below 0.30% is weak. Dwell time predicts clicks: 6 to 7 seconds produces roughly 0.7% to 1.0% eCTR, while 3 to 4 seconds produces 0.16% to 0.26%. ![LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad benchmarks table from 119 TLAs showing median CTR of 2.68% and median CPC of $2.29](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/LinkedIn-Thought-leader-Ads-Benchmarks-ZenABM.png) ## LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads case studies ### $120K deal from $2,035 in TLA spend [Ali Yildirim shared this result](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aayildirim_we-just-closed-a-120k-acv-contract-with-activity-7382417974256779264-hXfr): "We just closed a $120K ACV contract with a publicly traded company off $2,035.17 in spend on a Thought Leader ad." His point: "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." ### Valueships: 12 meetings and an enterprise deal In our [Valueships case study](/blog/winning-linkedin-thought-leader-ads-case-study-valueships), TLAs delivered 2,669 landing page clicks on $391 of the $6,204 total budget, at a $2.31 CPM and $0.15 per landing page click. Valueships booked 12 meetings in the first two weeks and closed an enterprise deal within 21 days. ### Cost per demo dropped 45% [Philip Ilic tested a concentrated TLA strategy](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philip-ilic_linkedinads-gtm-linkedin-activity-7401909536929804288-6FxG): "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." ### From zero demos to 6+ a month Tim Davidson's link edit, covered above, turned zero monthly demos into 6+, with 8 becoming opportunities and 1 closing. ## How ZenABM helps with Thought Leader Ads ZenABM is built for ABM on LinkedIn ads, and these capabilities handle the TLA-specific steps: - **Company engagements:** it shows every company engaging with your ads, with its engagement score, ABM stage and CRM data on one row, even if nobody liked the post. - **eCTR out of the box:** the dashboards calculate eCTR for TLAs, so you don't have to pull landing page clicks from Campaign Manager and divide them yourself. - **Zena, the AI agent:** it answers questions about live data, including which companies and deals engaged most with your TLAs, which is very hard to get from Campaign Manager. - **Intent signals and webhooks:** engagement turns into per-account signals synced to your CRM, and engaged companies can be pushed to Clay. - **Bidding agent and Budget Savers:** the Bidding agent flags fading ads, and Budget Savers keeps Audience Network and Audience Expansion off. - **MCP server:** it has limited support for TLAs today, because the post must be published on a personal profile first. Here is ZenABM's campaign performance and ad format benchmarks: ![ZenABM LinkedIn ABM ad report page showing campaign performance and CTR, CPC benchmarks by ad format](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/ZenABM-LinkedIn-ABM-Ad-Report-page-4.png) Here is the ad sets timeline for one company's engagement journey (PayPal): ![ZenABM ad sets timeline mapping PayPal's engagement journey across LinkedIn campaigns and dates](https://cdn.zenabm.com/media/PayPal-ZenABM-company-engagement-journey-mapping--scaled.png) ## More on Thought Leader Ads - [TLA benchmarks](/blog/tla-benchmarks): the numbers behind our eCTR and eCPC medians. - [How to write LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads](/blog/how-to-write-linkedin-thought-leader-ads): the copy patterns in more depth. - [What are LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads](/blog/what-are-linkedin-thought-leader-ads): the basics. - [How to run Thought Leader Ads on LinkedIn](/blog/how-to-run-thought-leader-ads-on-linkedin): how to set up the campaign. - [Gabriel Ehrlich's TLA Q&A](/blog/linkedin-thought-leader-ads-expert-qa-gabriel-ehrlich): budget and targeting advice from an agency CEO. - [Thought Leader Ads for ABM with Tim Davidson](/blog/thought-leader-ads-for-abm-tim-davidson-rpcd): his bidding and rotation rules. - [How to get your ICP to post more TLAs](/blog/how-to-get-your-icp-to-post-more-thought-leader-ads-tlas-on-linkedin): how to solve the supply problem. - [Founder-led LinkedIn ads](/blog/founder-led-linkedin-ads): how to use your founder's profile. - [LinkedIn sponsored post specs](/blog/linkedin-sponsored-post-specs): the specs in detail. - [LinkedIn cold awareness campaigns](/blog/linkedin-cold-awareness-campaigns): where TLAs fit. ## FAQs ### What is a thought leadership ad on LinkedIn? A thought leadership ad on LinkedIn is a sponsored post from an individual profile rather than a company page. It looks like a regular post and reaches your target audience through paid promotion, with only a small "Promoted by [Company]" note underneath. Because it keeps the author's identity and engagement, it feels more organic than a standard company ad. ### Are LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads worth it? Yes, for B2B companies where someone can write credible posts. In our early 2026 benchmark, TLAs cost $3.06 per landing page click vs $13.23 for single image. Philip Ilic's newer analysis found them more expensive, so track your own eCPC. They fit badly if nobody posts or if your budget is under $1,500/month. ### How much do LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads cost? Our median CPC is $2.29, but it counts all clicks, so use eCPC instead. That is a $3.06 median in our benchmark, though Philip Ilic's newer data shows $25.21. Costs vary widely by account and objective, and you should budget $50 to $100/day per campaign ($1,500 to $3,000/month) to get meaningful data. ### What are the LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad specs? TLAs run as single image, video or event ads from an existing public organic post, and you can promote text, image, video, article and newsletter posts. Documents, polls and multi-image posts are not supported. There is no CTA button on single image or video TLAs, but you can add URLs to the post text, and you cannot edit the post from the ad. ### Should I use Brand Awareness or Engagement for TLAs? Start with Engagement, then test Brand Awareness. There is no professional consensus: Philip Ilic's $300K analysis favoured Engagement, with a $4.80 CPC to the landing page vs $7.90 to $12+, while other tests, including mine, found Brand Awareness cheaper per landing page click. Compare eCPC on the same posts. ### How do I track which companies engage with my Thought Leader Ads? LinkedIn's Companies tab in Campaign Manager shows aggregate engagement. For company-level tracking, use ZenABM's [Company engagements](/companies-engagements) view, which shows each engaging company with its score, ABM stage and CRM data, and syncs signals to HubSpot, Salesforce or Attio.