Thought leader ads

Last updated: 1 week ago

Use thought leader ads to promote content from LinkedIn members, which can increase your reach and help you meet your brand goals. Thought leader ads help your content stay engaging and relevant by using authentic member experiences.  

Who can use this feature?

To set up an ad campaign that contains thought leader ads, you must have super admin, content admin, or Sponsored Content poster permissions for the company Page of the account. If the ad account is associated with a Showcase Page, you must have super admin, content admin, or Sponsored Content poster permissions for the parent company Page of the ad account. You don't need any permissions on the thought leader's ad account, but you do need to request permission from the content creator to sponsor their content as a thought leader ad.

Considerations

  • To promote a thought leader ad, the supported objective type must be brand awareness or engagement, and the supported ad format must be a single image ad, video ad, event ad, or article and newsletter ads.  
  • A call to action (CTA) button isn't available for single image ads or video ads, but URLs can be added to the intro text. 
  • Event ads will have a CTA button. 

Types of content that can be promoted as a thought leader ad 

You can promote the following types of content for a thought leader ad: 

  • Member posts - You can promote posts from employees of your company as well as members who are 1st or 2nd-degree connections. 
  • Events - Posts tied to LinkedIn Events created by your company Page. 
  • Articles and newsletters - Long-form articles and newsletter posts published natively on LinkedIn. 

Important to know

  • Celebrations, documents, polls, multi-images, and reshared posts aren’t eligible for promotion at this time. 
  • You can’t duplicate a thought leader ad. 

Sponsor permission requests for an organic post 

Once a sponsor permission request has been sent, the author of the post will receive an email that'll redirect to a page with the post that the company is proposing to promote as well as: 

  • Option to approve or reject 
  • Option to turn auto-approvals on or off 
  • Terms and conditions 

Here's a tip

There's no limit of requests that you can send to each thought leader.  

Reporting and metrics for thought leader ads 

Campaign Manager reports on the performance from a paid ad. 

Members can view the aggregated total of organic and paid metrics on antheir organic post from their profile. Keep in mind that this total doesn't reflect LinkedIn Audience Network metrics. 

The engagement metrics that apply to thought leader ads include: 

  • Member Follows - When an ad is a sponsored member post and a member follows the member profile through the ad. 
  • Clicks to Member Profile - When an ad is a sponsored member post and a member clicks the thought leader profile through the ad. 

Related tasks

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