LinkedIn Expands Thought Leader Ads To Allow Brands to Sponsor Organic Posts
LinkedIn has expanded the capabilities of its Thought Leader Ads. This ad format was introduced in July and allowed companies to sponsor posts from thought leaders and creators within their organizations with their permission. Now, brands can sponsor organic content from any eligible LinkedIn member.
In the Campaign Manager, brands can search for the person or post they want to sponsor, select an eligible post, and notify the creator to approve or deny the request.
Currently, brands can only run brand awareness or engagement campaign objectives for Thought Leader Ads, which will be rolled out globally by the end of March.
Why It Matters: This expansion gives LinkedIn a native solution similar to Meta Partnership Ads (formerly Branded Content Ads) and TikTok Spark Ads. Brands can capitalize on engaging organic content from their employees and those outside their organizations, including industry experts, creators, and customers.
Example use cases could include amplifying content from experts and creators they partnered with for influencer marketing campaigns and highlighting customer testimonials about their products or services.
Thought Leader Ads come as LinkedIn is emerging as a platform for influencer marketing for both B2B and B2C brands.
As seen with Partnership Ads and Spark Ads, native advertising solutions, specifically those that let brands amplify organic content from creators, can encourage more brands to invest in influencer marketing on a platform due to paid media helping brands better drive toward their performance goals, thanks to targeting and scale that paid media provides.
This, combined with other recent updates like a Paid Partnership label, post, and newsletter-specific analytics, should lead to more creator-brand collaborations on LinkedIn in 2024.
