LinkedIn Ads Examples: 12 B2B Campaigns and Why They Worked in 2026

TL;DR

• 12 LinkedIn ads examples, one rule: every campaign below is a named B2B advertiser running LinkedIn ad formats, with the targeting, offer and reported result.

• Format matters less than sequence: the strongest results came from campaigns that warmed an audience first and asked for the lead second.

• Benchmarks for context: median CTR runs from 0.24% (video) to 0.55% (event ads) across 161,256 B2B ads, so judge each example against its format, not against a blended average.

• What you get: a repeatable pattern from each example, plus a comparison table to pick the play that fits your team.

Part of the LinkedIn Ads Hub: LinkedIn Ads Cost in 2026: Benchmarks and ROI Playbook | LinkedIn Ads CTR Benchmark: 2026 B2B Averages | LinkedIn Conversation Ads: B2B Playbook | LinkedIn Document Ads vs Video Ads

What Makes LinkedIn Ads Examples Worth Copying

A typical list of LinkedIn ads examples shows a screenshot and a headline result. That tells your team what ran, not why it worked. Before the examples, here are the three principles that separate the campaigns below from the average B2B ad.

1. The format matches the funnel stage. ZenABM's 2026 benchmark of 161,256 B2B ads from 211 companies puts median CTR at 0.42% for single image, 0.43% for Document Ads, 0.24% for video and 0.55% for Event Ads (ZenABM). Video loses on clicks and wins on attention. Using it to sell a demo is a mismatch.

2. Overall CTR is not landing-page CTR. Thought Leader Ads report a 2.68% median CTR, but ZenABM notes that this overall figure is not directly comparable with single image CTR. Measured on landing-page clicks only, ZenABM reports a 0.43% average and a 0.29% median for Thought Leader Ads (ZenABM). The Valueships example below shows both numbers so you can see the gap.

3. The audience is warm before the ask. Seven of the 12 campaigns ran an awareness or content layer before a lead form, demo offer or message. The ask landed on people who already recognised the brand.

A note on the evidence: the results come from four types of source. Eight are published as LinkedIn customer stories (Tilt Metrics, Zoho Workplace, 360Suite, Rohde & Schwarz, Macquarie Data Centres, Templafy, Webflow and Payhawk). Valueships is a ZenABM case study, Lenovo's figures come from its own Shorty Awards entry, Wynter's from a CXL interview, and Hey Sid's are client-reported. None of the 12 is independently verified, baselines and timeframes are often undisclosed, and each entry says so where that applies. The "Why it works" lines are this article's analysis of the likely mechanism, not findings reported in the case studies.

Related reading: LinkedIn Ads Strategy for B2B: Budgets, Targeting and Creative | LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads in 2026: How B2B Teams Use Them, Costs and Benchmarks | LinkedIn Dynamic Ads for B2B: Follower and Spotlight Ads Explained

1. Hey Sid: LinkedIn Ads Aimed at Named Decision-Makers, Not Job Titles

Strategy: Hey Sid runs LinkedIn ads as one layer of the Influence Loop: Always On (person-level advertising), Authority Builder (done-for-you thought leadership) and Precision Connect (warm LinkedIn outreach), all aimed at the same named individuals over 60 to 90 days.

What makes it different: The audience is a list of people, not a set of targeting filters. Enriched ICP contacts are uploaded to LinkedIn Campaign Manager, and Hey Sid's process targets an 80%+ audience match rate. Executive posts written through Authority Builder are then promoted to that same list as Thought Leader Ads.

Formats used: Single image, video and Thought Leader Ads on LinkedIn, alongside Meta and Google ads, with ad engagement synced back to HubSpot.

Results:

Methodology and baselines for these client results are not publicly disclosed. Full stories are on the Hey Sid case studies page.

Why it works: The Influence Loop builds familiarity before anyone asks for a meeting. Hey Sid's sequence is designed so that by the time Precision Connect sends a message, the prospect has already seen the company's ads and its executives' posts in their feed. The message reads as the next step in a conversation, not a cold interruption.

Key takeaway for your team: Swap one job-title campaign for a matched audience of named buying-committee members, and measure engagement per account, not CTR per ad.

See how it works: heysid.com/how-it-works

2. Tilt Metrics: Document Ads That Replaced a Single Image Lead Magnet

Strategy: Tilt Metrics, a US agency running paid social for B2B software and services clients, tested Document Ads against Single Image Ads using the same guide, the same audience and the same campaign setup.

What makes it different: Prospects read a preview of the document inside the feed before the Lead Gen Form asked for details. Tilt also skipped the cover page and opened on the first useful insight.

Formats used: Document Ads with Lead Gen Forms.

Results (LinkedIn customer story), timeframe not stated:

• 52% lower cost per lead and 44% lower CPC

• 64% higher CTR than the Single Image version

• 85% higher Lead Gen Form completion rate

Why it works: LinkedIn reports lower CPL, higher form completion and that leads read at least part of the document. It does not report lead quality. This article's interpretation: the preview lets readers judge the content before the form appears, so the form feels like a fair trade rather than a gate. Whether that produces better-qualified leads is worth testing against your own pipeline data.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need a new asset to test this. Re-run your best-performing gated guide as a Document Ad with the first 3 to 5 pages ungated, against the same audience.

3. Valueships: Founder Thought Leader Ads That Outclicked Paid Creative

Strategy: Valueships, a SaaS pricing consultancy, promoted posts from co-founder Krzysztof Szyszkiewicz as Thought Leader Ads to CFOs and CEOs at SaaS companies in the US, UK, DACH and Western Europe. The posts ran in the same campaign as single image and carousel ads from February 2026.

What makes it different: The posts opened with an analogy or humour, named real companies and real figures, and placed a soft call to action at the end with a link.

Formats used: Thought Leader Ads, single image, carousel.

Results (ZenABM case study), first two weeks:

Thought Leader Ads drove 83% of website clicks on 6% of the budget. Their all-click CTR was 10.68%, a reminder that overall CTR and landing-page CTR measure different things.

Why it works: A founder's post looks like content, not an ad, so senior buyers give it the attention they would give a peer. The specific numbers and named companies give a CFO a reason to click through for the detail.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need a content team. Take one founder post that already performed organically and run it as a Thought Leader Ad against your ICP for two weeks, tracking landing-page clicks only.

4. Lenovo: Employee Thought Leader Ads Across Business Units

Strategy: Lenovo's Global Social Media Center of Excellence piloted Thought Leader Ads with executives in an incubator business unit, then asked each business unit to nominate leaders and subject-matter experts to feature.

What makes it different: The posts came from employees at several levels, not only the CEO, and each post had its own audience: IT decision-makers for a product demo, a general audience for a partnership announcement.

Formats used: Thought Leader Ads, alongside single image and video.

Results (Shorty Awards entry), timeframe not stated:

• 6x higher engagement rate than LinkedIn's historical benchmarks

• 63% increase in campaign CTR after audiences had seen the Thought Leader Ads

• Gartner event posts: 6.92% engagement rate, 15x the benchmark, and $0.38 cost per engagement, 94% below the benchmark cost

Why it works: The 63% CTR lift was measured on campaigns served after audiences had seen the Thought Leader Ads. One reading of that sequence: the human post did the trust-building, and the brand ad collected the click.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need executives at Lenovo's scale. Pick two subject-matter experts, promote one post each per month to your target accounts, and compare CTR on your brand ads before and after.

5. Zoho Workplace: Video First, Then a Single Image Ask

Strategy: Zoho Workplace ran 30 to 40 second "office sitcom" videos, each built around one workplace frustration. In India, people who watched were then retargeted with Single Image Ads driving to a landing page. In the US, the videos ran as Connected TV ads to business decision-makers.

What makes it different: The video never asked for a click. Its only job was to make the second ad familiar.

Formats used: Video Ads, Single Image Ads, LinkedIn CTV.

Results (LinkedIn customer story), timeframe not stated:

• 12% aided brand awareness lift in the US

• 10% higher CTR on mid-funnel ads for audiences warmed by video

• 6M+ impressions and 35%+ target audience penetration

Why it works: Video's median CTR of 0.24% sits below single image and Document Ads, so it is a poor click driver. Used as a warming layer, it raises the CTR of the format that follows.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need a sitcom budget. Run a 30-second video to your target list for four weeks, build a video-viewer retargeting audience, and serve your existing single image offer only to that audience.

6. 360Suite: Event Ads That Fed a Lead Gen Form Retargeting Play

Strategy: 360Suite, a 50 to 100 person business intelligence software company, promoted a series of virtual events streamed on LinkedIn Live to decision-makers in finance, healthcare and government, targeted by skills.

What makes it different: People who engaged with an event but did not register were retargeted with Lead Gen Forms and a post-event demo call to action.

Formats used: Event Ads, LinkedIn Live, Lead Gen Forms.

Results (LinkedIn customer story):

• 2,000+ registrations and 632 sales qualified leads in six weeks

• $19 cost per registration

• Under $50 cost per SQL from the retargeting campaign

Why it works: The event was a low-commitment first ask. Everyone who clicked became a warm, known audience, so the second ask (a demo) went only to people who had already shown interest in the topic.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need a conference. One 45-minute LinkedIn Live session with a customer gives you an engaged audience to retarget for the next quarter.

7. Rohde & Schwarz: Sponsored Messages to Engineers Who Left the Trade Show Floor

Strategy: Rohde & Schwarz, a Munich-based electronics group, moved its Asia Pacific demand generation from trade shows to LinkedIn, starting in 2018. Sponsored Content built awareness among engineers, Sponsored Messages replaced email for nurturing, and Lead Gen Forms captured the lead.

What makes it different: Each format had one job in the sequence, and Campaign Manager rotated formats inside a single campaign.

Formats used: Sponsored Content, Sponsored Messages, Lead Gen Forms.

Results (LinkedIn customer story):

• Up to 80% lower cost per lead than industry benchmarks (period not stated)

Why it works: Engineers research online long before they talk to sales. Reaching them in the feed, then in their inbox with a personal message, rebuilt the trade show sequence of "see the stand, then talk to someone" in a digital format.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need a global events budget to copy this. Map your current trade show sequence step by step and assign one LinkedIn format to each step.

8. Macquarie Data Centres: A Niche Audience That Became the Top Traffic Source

Strategy: Macquarie Data Centres sells colocation to hyperscalers, large enterprises and government. Its target audience was small: international enterprises looking for data centre capacity in Australia, with several buying personas per account. With agency Digivizer, it ran a test, learn and improve cycle down to individual creatives.

What makes it different: The team accepted a low-volume audience and optimised creative, not reach.

Formats used: LinkedIn paid campaigns (formats not specified in the case study).

Results (LinkedIn customer story), 2022 to 2023:

• 7.5x increase in conversions from LinkedIn paid campaigns

• 73% better CTR at a 69% lower CPC

• LinkedIn's share of website users rose from 0.8% to 32%

Why it works: The case study reports iterative creative optimisation and the outcome metrics, not the cause behind them. A possible mechanism: a small audience sees the same ads often, so creative fatigue is a real risk, and regular creative testing is one way to keep frequency from turning into ad blindness.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need a large TAM. If your audience is under a few thousand people, set a creative refresh cadence before you set a budget.

9. Templafy: Sales and Marketing Targeting the Same Accounts

Strategy: Templafy, a document generation platform founded in Denmark, rebuilt its LinkedIn funnel to support expansion into the UK, US, Nordics and Germany. Marketing narrowed its targeting to the same accounts and ICP as sales, importing saved leads from Sales Navigator and dynamic lists through a Demandbase integration.

What makes it different: The audience came from the sales team's account list, not from marketing's personas.

Formats used: Full-funnel LinkedIn campaigns (formats not specified), with extensive A/B testing.

Results (LinkedIn customer story):

• 81% more pipeline generated year on year

• 46% lower cost per opportunity and 1.2x return on ad spend

• 61% more webinar and event sign-ups and 30% more branded search

Why it works: When ads and sales outreach hit the same accounts, each makes the other more effective. Sales calls land on people who have seen the brand, and ad spend stops going to accounts sales will never work.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need a Demandbase licence. Export your sales team's top 200 open accounts, upload them as a company list, and run your next campaign only against that list.

10. Webflow: Reaching the Whole Buying Committee for an Enterprise Motion

Strategy: Webflow added an enterprise, sales-led motion to a self-serve product. It used LinkedIn to test positioning before scaling, then targeted the wider buying committee at companies with 200+ employees, including people at target accounts already using the free product.

What makes it different: Persona-specific gated content beat product release announcements with enterprise audiences, and sales reps followed up through Sales Navigator with the same messaging.

Formats used: Sponsored Content, Lead Gen Forms, Conversation Ads, with video tested.

Results (LinkedIn customer story), year on year, no specific year stated:

• 425% increase in MQLs

• 200% increase in sales-accepted opportunities in Q4

• 71% revenue growth

Why it works: Enterprise deals stall when only one stakeholder knows the vendor. Running persona-specific content to marketers, designers and their managers meant the champion was not selling alone.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need Webflow's product-led data. List the 3 to 5 roles that sign off on your deals and write one ad per role, not one ad per campaign.

11. Payhawk: Top-Funnel Content That Fixed an Expensive Lead Engine

Strategy: Payhawk, a London-based spend management company, was paying too much for MQLs from bottom-funnel LinkedIn conversion campaigns aimed at cold audiences. It shifted to a full-funnel plan led by content in the UK, Germany and Spain, with topics drawn from the sales team's notes on customer pain points.

What makes it different: The best performer was a guide, "The CFO's Guide to Remote Working", not a product offer.

Formats used: Full-funnel LinkedIn campaigns (formats not specified), with ongoing A/B tests.

Results (LinkedIn customer story):

• Cost per lead 85% below industry benchmarks (period not stated)

Why it works: A cold CFO has no reason to book a demo. A useful guide earns the first click, and the second ask lands on someone who has already gained something from the brand.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need a content team. Ask sales for the three questions prospects raise most often, and turn the most common one into your next top-funnel ad.

12. Wynter: Conversation Ads With a Qualifying Flow and an Incentive

Strategy: Wynter, an ICP discovery platform for B2B marketers, sent Conversation Ads to people at B2B SaaS companies. A series of button questions screened for people responsible for pipeline and messaging, and qualified prospects were offered a $100 gift card for completing a demo.

What makes it different: The qualification happened inside the message flow, before anyone reached the booking page.

Formats used: Conversation Ads.

Results (CXL), launched May 2023:

• Demos doubled within three months, over a typically slow summer

• 52% open rate on the Conversation Ads

• $476 ad cost per completed meeting, plus the $100 incentive, after removing no-shows and poor-fit meetings

Why it works: The button flow filters out poor-fit prospects before the incentive is offered, so the gift card buys time with qualified buyers, not with anyone who wants a voucher.

Key takeaway for your team: You do not need an incentive budget to test this. Build a three-question qualifying flow first, and add an incentive only if completion rates are low. For flow design, see the LinkedIn Conversation Ads playbook.

LinkedIn Ads Examples Compared

How to Apply These LinkedIn Ad Patterns

1. Pick the format by funnel stage, then judge it against that format's median, not a blended CTR.

2. Warm the audience before the ask: video, events or a person's post first, lead form or demo second.

3. Build the audience from your sales team's account list, so ads and outreach reach the same people.

4. Promote people as well as the brand: Thought Leader Ads from founders and experts did the trust-building in 3 of 12 examples.

5. Measure landing-page clicks, cost per opportunity and pipeline, not overall CTR or CPL alone.

6. If your team cannot run all five, a managed service such as Hey Sid runs the targeting, creative refresh every 60 days, thought leadership and outreach against your named accounts.

One platform is worth knowing as you scale. Metadata.io builds B2B audiences, landing pages and ad creatives, then sets up and runs campaigns across 12 channels (Metadata.io). Its LinkedIn Marketing Partner profile lists Conversation Ads among its supported LinkedIn formats (LinkedIn). To find new LinkedIn ads examples in your own category, use the LinkedIn Ad Library.

FAQ

What is the best LinkedIn ad format for a small B2B team?

Start with the format that reuses an asset you already have. If you have a strong guide, Document Ads let prospects read before they convert, as Tilt Metrics showed with a 52% lower cost per lead. If a founder already posts, test Thought Leader Ads: in the Valueships example they cost $0.15 per landing-page click against $10.02 for single image.

How many LinkedIn ad formats should a B2B team run at once?

Two is a practical starting point: one warming format and one conversion format. Zoho paired video with single image, and 360Suite paired Event Ads with Lead Gen Forms. Adding formats before each one has a clear job spreads the budget too thin to read results.

What should LinkedIn ads be paired with?

The strongest examples above connected LinkedIn ads to sales activity: Templafy targeted the sales team's accounts, Webflow's reps followed up through Sales Navigator, and Hey Sid adds outreach to the same people. Ads build familiarity. A conversation turns it into pipeline.

How do I measure whether a LinkedIn ad worked?

Separate overall CTR from landing-page CTR first, as the Valueships example shows a 10.68% all-click CTR next to a 1.57% landing-page CTR. Then track cost per qualified lead, cost per opportunity and influenced pipeline. The LinkedIn Ads CTR benchmark guide breaks down medians by format.

Conclusion: What These LinkedIn Ads Examples Have in Common

The 12 LinkedIn ads examples above used different formats, budgets and markets. The pattern holds across them: match the format to the funnel stage, warm the audience before asking, and point ads at the accounts sales is already working. The formats are the easy part. The sequence and the audience decide the result.

For the cost side of these plays, read LinkedIn Ads Cost in 2026: Benchmarks and ROI Playbook. For the format trade-offs, see LinkedIn Document Ads vs Video Ads.

Book a demo: heysid.com/demo

LinkedIn Ads Hub

LinkedIn Ads Hub: LinkedIn Ads Cost in 2026: Benchmarks and ROI Playbook | LinkedIn Conversation Ads: B2B Playbook | LinkedIn Document Ads vs Video Ads | LinkedIn Insight Tag: Install and Attribution Guide | LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads in 2026 | LinkedIn Dynamic Ads for B2B | LinkedIn Carousel Ads for B2B: Specs and Examples

Sources

• ZenABM, "LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks 2026"

• ZenABM, "Thought Leader Ads Benchmarks"

• ZenABM, "Valueships Thought Leader Ads Case Study"

• LinkedIn, "Tilt Metrics" customer story

• Shorty Awards, "Lenovo's LinkedIn Campaign Showcases the Power of Thought Leadership Ads"

• LinkedIn, "Zoho Workplace" customer story

• LinkedIn, "360Suite" customer story

• LinkedIn, "Rohde & Schwarz" customer story

• LinkedIn, "Macquarie Data Centres" customer story

• LinkedIn, "Templafy" customer story

• LinkedIn, "Webflow" customer story

• LinkedIn, "Payhawk" customer story

• CXL, "How Wynter Doubled Demos with Incentives and LinkedIn Conversation Ads"

• LinkedIn, "Metadata" Marketing Partner profile

• Hey Sid, "How It Works"

• Hey Sid, "Case Studies"