LinkedIn Ads vs Display Ads for ABM: Which Is Better?

LinkedIn ads vs display ads for ABM comes down to how accurately you can reach the right people at the right accounts. When I started running ABM at Userpilot in 2024, I skipped display and went LinkedIn only, because LinkedIn's company data is self-reported (members declare where they work and keep it current for their own professional image), while display matches traffic to companies by IP address. LinkedIn also lets you narrow down by job function and job title. Let's evaluate display for ABM against ABM on LinkedIn on targeting, formats, engagement and cost.

LinkedIn Ads vs Display Ads for ABM: quick summary

Which is better for ABM, LinkedIn ads or display ads? For most teams, start with LinkedIn and add display later, as a warm retargeting layer. Here is the short version of why.

• Verdict: start with LinkedIn for focused ABM when named accounts, specific roles and credible expert content matter most, and add display only when it brings extra reach or reinforces accounts that are already warm.
• In ZenABM, a LinkedIn-first ABM tool, you see which companies and job titles engage with your LinkedIn ads, keep Audience Network and Audience Expansion off, apply exclusions across all campaigns and tie ad touchpoints to deals, from $59/month with no ad-spend markup.
• Targeting: LinkedIn combines company lists with job title, function and seniority from self-reported profiles, while display matches traffic to companies by reverse IP lookup, and 6sense supports predicted job level and function but not exact titles.
• Cost per impression: display buys cheaper impressions (6sense recommends $8 to $10 CPM bids for banners, while ZenABM's observed LinkedIn median CPMs are $59.15 for single image and $49.37 for Thought Leader Ads), but a cheap impression is not a cheap qualified opportunity, so compare qualified reach instead.
• Engagement: all-click CTR (every click, including likes and "see more") and landing page CTR (only clicks to your site divided by impressions) are different metrics, and no current independent display CTR benchmark for ABM is published, so I will not compare the two as if they were the same thing.
• Tool cost: Vendr's medians are $62,440 a year for 6sense and $68,591 for Demandbase, plus 15 to 18% data and service fees inside 6sense campaign spend, while LinkedIn Campaign Manager needs no suite.
• Formats: Thought Leader Ads exist only on LinkedIn, and Valueships got 12 meetings in under two weeks from $391 of Thought Leader Ad spend (a case-specific result, not an average).
• When display fits: warm retargeting inside a "360 surround-sound" programme, for enterprises with very large budgets and very high ACV.

The table below puts every channel side by side on the criteria that matter for ABM.

What is display advertising and how is it different from LinkedIn advertising for ABM?

Display advertising buys visual placements across websites and apps, while LinkedIn advertising mainly reaches members inside LinkedIn, with an optional extension to third-party sites through its Audience Network. The useful comparison is not "banners versus feed ads". What matters is how each one identifies the audience, where the ad appears, how people interact with it and how you measure it.

Types of display ad networks

Display for ABM is really three different things, and they differ on targeting, inventory and economics.

On Google, the Display Network inventory of more than 2 million sites, videos and apps remains available. Google's help page also says optimized targeting can expand beyond the audiences you selected. In Display & Video 360, Google documents that you can turn it off to restrict targeting to first-party audiences. I could not confirm the same switch for Google Ads Display, so check that before you rely on it.

6sense is an enterprise suite with display advertising at its core. I had a few demos and decided against it, because it was too complex and too expensive for our needs. It targets account audiences plus predicted job function and seniority, but its documentation says exact-title targeting is not supported, and persona targeting reduces reach by design. The costs add up beyond the contract too: 6sense's documentation puts data and service fees at 15 to 18% inside campaign spend (not an extra 18% on top of your budget), plus a 15% Ad Services Fee on LinkedIn campaigns run through its platform. Vendr's median contract is $62,440 a year. Reviewers on G2 (4.2/5 from 1,571 reviews) praise the intent data and segmentation, and they criticise the steep learning curve and the missing price transparency.

Here is the campaign type selection screen in 6sense, where you choose how the campaign will run:

And this is the persona map showing engagement status by role:

Compared with ZenABM, 6sense is built for display and predictive intent at enterprise scale, while ZenABM runs the LinkedIn side with company engagement, exclusions and deal attribution from $59/month.

Demandbase is the other traditional enterprise suite, with a native B2B ad platform across display, native, video and CTV. I had a couple of demos with their team, and display advertising at very large scale is where it is strongest. Its campaign dashboards show account-level and person-level results, and its own help centre says CTR and CPC are B2C metrics, so it recommends you track target-account engagement instead. It publishes a CTR guideline of 0.05 to 0.07% (and personalised creative if CTR falls below 0.04%), which is vendor guidance, not an industry average. Vendr's median contract is $68,591 a year (range $24,000 to $164,037, 187 purchases), so budget about $70K before ad spend. G2 shows 4.4/5 from 2,012 reviews, with the learning curve as the most common complaint.

This is the Inventory Planner ad configuration screen in Demandbase:

And the buying groups account interface:

Compared with ZenABM, Demandbase buys display at very large scale, while ZenABM covers LinkedIn engagement, account stages and attribution without a suite contract.

AdRoll ABM (formerly RollWorks) is the easier entry point to specialist display. I evaluated it for my ABM programme at Userpilot in 2024 and had several demos with the team. AdRoll's pricing page lists four ABM packages, and only Account-Based Retargeting has a published term: no platform fee, you pay only for media. The other three are custom quotes. G2 shows 4.3/5 from 655 reviews, where reviewers like the ICP fit scoring and the LinkedIn connector.

AdRoll's own pricing page shows the packages and which ones publish a term:

Here is the intent topics selector, where you pick the keywords your accounts research:

Compared with ZenABM, AdRoll ABM leans on advertising across display, native and CTV, while ZenABM is built for creating and managing LinkedIn campaigns and showing which companies engage.

Influ2 takes a contact-level approach: it runs display and social ads to named people inside target accounts and reports engagement by name. I had a demo with them. Vendr's median is about $60,000 a year (range $34,800 to $113,520), and G2 shows 4.6/5 from 161 reviews. Reviewers praise the person-level targeting and the support, and they complain about limited reporting and a confusing ad approval process.

Here is the Sales priorities account list in Influ2:

And the journey builder with pipeline generation stages:

Compared with ZenABM, Influ2 puts ads in front of named contacts across channels, while ZenABM gives you company-level engagement from your own LinkedIn ads, ABM stages and deal attribution, with contact data next to each company journey.

Should you enable LinkedIn Audience Network for ABM?

Does LinkedIn have display ads? LinkedIn runs ads in its feed, inbox and right rail, and its Audience Network optionally extends Sponsored Content to third-party sites and apps. It is not a programmatic banner buy. Audience Network is available for single image, carousel, document and video ads. You cannot run an off-LinkedIn-only campaign, because if you enable it, any ad in the campaign can appear outside LinkedIn as well as in the feed, with the same targeting, bid and budget.

You can check it separately, though. Campaign Manager has an On/Off Network breakdown for clicks, impressions, views and view completions, but conversions from Audience Network placements are reported at campaign level only. You can also exclude publisher categories or upload a custom allowlist or blocklist. LinkedIn publishes no cost or outcome benchmark for on versus off network, so the only way to know whether it adds qualified accounts is to test it against your own list.

For an ABM list, extra reach outside your named accounts is rarely what you want. ZenABM's Budget Savers keeps LinkedIn Audience Network and Audience Expansion switched off on every ad set, including ones created later, and re-checks them hourly, so you don't have to remember to untick them each time.

Display ads vs LinkedIn ads: ad formats

Display runs banners, HTML5 and rich media, native placements and video, depending on the platform. LinkedIn runs single image, carousel, video, document, text and Thought Leader Ads, among others.

Thought Leader Ads are the format display cannot copy. They sponsor an expert's existing personal post, so the ad keeps their name, face and social proof, and no display platform has this native format. In ZenABM's sample I see them as a leading format for attention and engagement, but not as the single most effective format for leads or revenue. Our Thought Leader Ads guide covers them in full.

They also open two ABM plays that display cannot run: influencer campaigns, and customer-led case studies, where you sponsor a customer champion's public post with their permission. That carries more credibility than a claim you wrote yourself. LinkedIn's rules are worth knowing before you plan this:

1. The member must give permission, their profile must show their full name and the post must be public.
2. Celebrations, documents, polls, multi-image posts and reposts are not eligible.
3. In Campaign Manager you can sponsor posts from your employees and from 1st or 2nd-degree connections, while 3rd-degree and further needs Creator Marketplace.
4. Members can revoke permission, and the ad then turns off immediately.
5. Single image and video Thought Leader Ads have no CTA button, so add the URL to the intro text.

For proof, the Valueships case study reports $391 of Thought Leader Ad spend, a $2.31 CPM, $0.15 per landing page click and 12 meetings in under two weeks. The meetings followed an engagement-to-outreach workflow: ZenABM showed which companies engaged, and the team followed up with them. As I wrote on LinkedIn, Thought Leader Ads drove 83% of all website clicks for under 6% of Valueships' total ad spend, and the demos were all influenced by Thought Leader Ads only. These are case-specific results, not expected averages.

Display ads vs LinkedIn ads: targeting options

LinkedIn combines company lists with job title, function and seniority from member-declared profile data, while specialist display can reach the account but cannot guarantee the persona. LinkedIn says members have professional incentives to keep their profiles accurate. G2 reviewers still mention occasional targeting inaccuracies, so treat profiles as good, not infallible. Company name targeting is based on LinkedIn Pages, and a campaign needs at least 300 matched members to run.

Here is what that looks like in Campaign Manager, with the estimated audience reach shown next to the targeting:

Display works the other way round. 6sense's documentation says it supports job level and function but excludes exact-title subdivisions, and cookie availability can limit coverage. Reverse IP lookup also gets weaker with remote work and VPNs. ZoomInfo reports that IP-based tools typically identify 15 to 30% of B2B traffic at company level. abmatic's own study of 1,204,258 sessions matched 46.8% of sessions, with only 20.9% of matches high-confidence. Both are vendor figures, so read them as a range, not a rule. The Syft chart below compares the accuracy of visitor identification vendors in one independent test:

What about wrong-account bleed? No defensible LinkedIn-versus-display percentage is published, so I won't give you one. Measure off-list delivery in your own campaigns. Also keep in mind that an unexpected company in a LinkedIn report can be one member's second current job, so it is not automatically a wasted impression 😅

On LinkedIn you can act on what you find. Campaign Manager doesn't show you the company behind engagement, so ZenABM's Company engagements view lists every engaging company with its engagement score, ABM stage and CRM data on one row.

ZenABM's Job title engagement groups engagement by role, so you can check you reached the buying committee.

ZenABM's Exclusions syncs unwanted companies, titles and industries to LinkedIn, team-wide or per campaign, and applies them to new campaigns too.

The impression capping view lists overexposed accounts so you can exclude them from the right ad sets. That gives you account visibility plus exclusions, not a guaranteed real-time hard cap.

These controls apply to LinkedIn. Display platforms have their own frequency controls (6sense's default frequency cap is 6 impressions per person per day), so display can be capped too.

Display ads vs LinkedIn ads: engagement rate data

Engagement numbers only mean something when you know what each one counts. All-click CTR counts every click on the ad, including likes, comments and "see more". Landing page CTR counts only clicks that reach your site divided by impressions. ZenABM calls it eCTR (effective CTR), which is the same thing, and I'll call it landing page CTR from here on.

These are different datasets with different definitions, so this is not a controlled comparison. No current independent display CTR benchmark for ABM is published. LocaliQ and WordStream now report search only, and the often-quoted 0.46% display CTR is a 2018 figure that keeps circulating.

One more caveat on cost per click. ZenABM reports a Thought Leader Ad median landing page CPC of $18.09 against $13.23 for single image, and a spend-weighted landing page CPC of $3.06 for Thought Leader Ads. A spend-weighted number must not be compared with another format's median, so don't draw a winner from these.

Demandbase itself says CTR and CPC are B2C metrics and recommends tracking target-account engagement, which is the right instinct. ZenABM's dashboards calculate landing page CTR out of the box, Thought Leader Ads included. That saves you from pulling landing page clicks from the Campaign Manager engagement report and dividing them by impressions yourself.

Display ads vs LinkedIn ads: advertising costs

Display buys cheaper impressions, and that is the whole story on CPM. ZenABM's observed LinkedIn median CPMs are $59.15 for single image and $49.37 for Thought Leader Ads. 6sense recommends $8 to $10 CPM bids for banners and $10 to $12 for HTML5, which are bidding recommendations, not observed medians or guaranteed prices. I found no comparable Google Display or Audience Network ABM CPM benchmark.

CPM is how much you pay for 1,000 impressions, but the number that matters for ABM is how much you pay to reach 1,000 members.

CPM = spend ÷ impressions × 1,000

Cost per 1,000 members reached = spend ÷ unique member accounts reached × 1,000

LinkedIn describes its reach metrics as modeled, and display cookies and devices are not interchangeable with LinkedIn member accounts, so treat the comparison as directional. Here is an illustration: a $50 CPM at an average frequency of 4 equals $200 per 1,000 members reached over the same period.

A low CPM does not mean cheaper qualified opportunities. Compare qualified reach and the cost of the opportunity next to CPM.

Display ads vs LinkedIn ads: tool costs and audience network markups

LinkedIn Campaign Manager doesn't require a 6sense or Demandbase subscription. ZenABM adds CRM sync, starting from $59/month billed annually (Starter), with Growth at $159, Pro at $399 and Agency at $479 a month on annual billing. You pay media spend to LinkedIn, and ZenABM takes no ad-spend markup.

These Vendr medians are observed contracts across packages, not list prices, display-only quotes or minimum entry costs. Ask for an itemised quote, and don't apply full-suite prices or an assumed universal markup to every display campaign. Your total cost is the subscription, the ad spend, data add-ons and your team's time.

Pros and cons of display ads vs LinkedIn ads for ABM

When do display ads make sense for ABM?

Display makes sense as a warm retargeting layer inside a "360 surround-sound" campaign, where you reinforce LinkedIn, website, event and sales touches with consistent customer proof and use-case messaging. It fits best in an enterprise ABM stack with high ACV, long sales cycles, big budgets and a team that can coordinate several channels.

Even then, display is not where I would start. In our Bootcamp talk on multi-channel ABM, Ali Yildirim said he avoids programmatic prospecting and runs display only as retargeting, either on the Google Display Network or inside tools like 6sense restricted to named accounts and site visitors. That way you don't have to allocate much of the ABM budget to display. In her ABM Bootcamp talk on surrounding accounts, Joana Petrova described a sequence where display runs first to all accounts and personas to raise awareness, and engagement thresholds are set before accounts are saturated on LinkedIn. I've held this view for a while: asked which ABM play to retire in 2025, I named display ads for B2B ABM. The counterpoint came at our London meetup, where Casper Rouchmann said that for one-to-many motions display or programmatic is the main channel, while LinkedIn and similar channels remain the best for ABM overall.

I also retarget ABM target accounts on Reddit and Meta in addition to LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is where you can target ICP accounts with the highest precision, but it is not a direct-response demand-capture channel. The enterprise-only rule is not absolute, since basic Google retargeting can work on smaller budgets. Expensive specialist platforms, on the other hand, need a much stronger business case.

How do you test whether display adds value beyond LinkedIn?

1. Split similar accounts into comparable groups, one with display on top of LinkedIn and one with LinkedIn only.
2. Keep a holdout group that gets neither, so you can see what happens without marketing.
3. Wait for at least part of your sales cycle before judging, because pipeline lags impressions.
4. Decide up front what counts as success, which should be extra qualified opportunities or faster stage progression, not low CPM or view-through attribution.

To size the test, try the ABM Budget Calculator. Scale display only when account-level testing shows it adds qualified opportunities beyond your existing channel mix.

How ZenABM helps with ABM on LinkedIn

When I was VP of Marketing at Userpilot, I struggled to run ABM on LinkedIn. My husband watched it up close and built ZenABM to fix it. I might be a bit biased as a co-founder, but I also know first-hand what it is like to struggle to find the right tool. ZenABM is a LinkedIn-first ABM tool that helps small to mid-market teams create, manage and optimise LinkedIn ads with AI, see which companies engage, and tie ads to pipeline. Here is which capability does which step:

• See which companies engage: Company engagements shows every company engaging with your ads, with its score, ABM stage and CRM data on one row, even when nobody from that company likes or comments.

• See which roles you reached: Job title engagement groups engagement by title, so you can check how well you covered the buying committee.
• Keep spend on your list: Exclusions and Budget Savers keep bad-fit accounts and Audience Network out, and the impression capping view shows you which accounts are overexposed.
• Score accounts and move them through stages: account stages are rules over LinkedIn engagement and CRM conditions, so the stage is computed rather than updated by hand.

• Capture intent from your own ads: each ad set carries a theme, and ZenABM turns engagement into an intent signal per account and syncs it to your CRM or pushes it over webhooks.

• Tie ads to pipeline: the deal attribution dashboard shows the touchpoints behind every deal, multi-channel revenue attribution puts LinkedIn, Google, Reddit, AI referrals and organic on one company journey, and the ABM campaign dashboards show ROAS and influenced pipeline.

• Ask your data: Zena, ZenABM's AI agent, answers questions about your live LinkedIn ads data, and it can show in aggregate which companies engaged most with a format or campaign, which is very hard to get from Campaign Manager.

• Create and manage campaigns from a chat: the AI campaign builder and ZenABM's MCP server, which writes as well as reads, let you create and manage campaigns, ad sets and ads straight from Claude.

Here is Claude creating four image ads and a new ad set through the ZenABM MCP:

• Sync and automate: CRM sync writes engagement, scores, stages and intent onto HubSpot, Salesforce or Attio company records, and webhooks push engaged accounts to Clay.

One G2 reviewer wrote that what they like best about ZenABM "is that they understand ABM beyond theory." Another said "they've built a good API and MCP that we can build stuff on top of." G2 shows 5.0/5 from 6 reviews.

Here is what to know before you choose ZenABM. It is LinkedIn-first, so it does not buy display, personalise websites or sell third-party intent data. Reviewers say ABM takes time to compound, one wished for a Pipedrive integration, one noted that company data can load slowly, and one mentioned restrictions on the LinkedIn side. The team ships new features fast based on customer feedback. Enterprise teams and agencies use it too: it runs the LinkedIn side of a bigger programme next to a display suite, applies exclusions team-wide, and the Agency plan (from $479/month billed annually) comes with the Agency MCP server, where one connection reaches every client workspace. If you want to see it with your own data, start a free trial or book a demo.

LinkedIn ads vs display ads for ABM: my verdict

Pick the channel for the job you need done, not the longest feature list. Otherwise you pay for the whole gym and use the treadmill 🤷‍♀️

• Display advertising at very large scale: Demandbase or 6sense.
• Easier specialist display, or basic retargeting: AdRoll ABM or Google.
• LinkedIn-first ABM on a lean team: ZenABM, with company engagement, exclusions and deal attribution from $59/month.

Which channel is carrying your ABM pipeline today?

If you want to go deeper, these guides cover the related topics:

• ZenABM
• BDR outreach
• intents like product analytics

Frequently asked questions

Does LinkedIn have display ads?

Not in the banner sense. LinkedIn runs ads in its feed, inbox and right rail, targeted by company, title and seniority. Its Audience Network optionally extends Sponsored Content to third-party sites and apps for single image, carousel, document and video ads, with an On/Off Network breakdown in Campaign Manager. There is no programmatic banner buy.

Can you run programmatic display ads on LinkedIn?

No. Programmatic display buys banner inventory across the web through cookies, device IDs and IP matching, while LinkedIn targets accounts from profile data instead. The Audience Network can show your Sponsored Content on third-party sites with the same targeting and budget, but you cannot run it as an off-LinkedIn-only campaign. For true programmatic display, you need a separate platform.

What is ABM display advertising?

It is serving banner or native ads to a list of target accounts, usually by matching IP addresses or cookies to companies through platforms like 6sense, Demandbase or AdRoll ABM. Demandbase's own CTR guideline for ABM campaigns is 0.05 to 0.07%. It works best as small-budget retargeting of named accounts, not as a prospecting channel.

Is display or LinkedIn better for ABM?

For most teams, LinkedIn. Its company and title data is self-reported and can be combined with function and seniority, while display matches traffic to companies by IP. Start with LinkedIn, then add display later as a warm retargeting layer once you have engaged accounts, a large budget and high ACV.

How do you measure ABM ads at the account level?

Look at which target companies engaged, not total clicks and impressions. 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. The deal attribution dashboard then ties those touchpoints to deals.

Is 6sense or Demandbase worth it for ABM?

It depends on whether you need display at very large scale. Vendr's median contracts are $62,440 a year for 6sense and $68,591 for Demandbase, before ad spend, and 6sense deducts 15 to 18% in fees from campaign spend. If most of your budget goes to LinkedIn, a LinkedIn-first tool costs far less.