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How AI in PPC is Revolutionizing Digital Ads
March 31, 2025
If you’ve scrolled through LinkedIn lately, chances are you’ve stumbled upon a post from someone you don’t follow, but it still looks like an organic post. Well, that's what we'll be discussing today. It’s a Thought Leader Ad (TL Ad)—LinkedIn’s newer, shinier ad format that lets individuals, not just companies, promote posts on the platform.
Launched in 2023, TL Ads have been a game-changer for B2B SaaS brands, delivering higher engagement, better click-through rates (CTR), and lower costs compared to traditional LinkedIn ads. And with 75% of B2B buyers using social media to guide their purchasing decisions, making the most out of TL Ads is no longer an option—it’s a necessity, as is selecting the right agency to develop and implement your TL ads strategy.
In this guide, we’ll break down what Thought Leader Ads are, why they’re outperforming traditional ads, and how you can use them to crush your LinkedIn marketing game.
Imagine a LinkedIn post that reads like insightful, value-packed content from an individual—except instead of organically appearing in your feed, it's strategically promoted by a company. That's a TL Ad in a nutshell.
Unlike traditional company ads, these ads:
1. Appear as posts from an individual’s account (not the brand page) and carry a ‘Promoted By’ tag instead of just ‘Promoted’
2. Don’t have a CTA button for a change
3. Tend to be less sales-y and more value-driven
Because traditional LinkedIn ads are facing some serious problems.
According to LinkedIn, traditional ads are seeing falling engagement rates. Why?
For starters, competition is fierce. SaaS niches are getting crowded with companies offering nearly identical solutions, and all of them are throwing marketing dollars at LinkedIn ads. Too many options mean many users simply scroll past everything.
Then there’s ad fatigue.
As we spend more time on social media, ads bombard us at every turn, creating exhaustion. This hits especially hard for B2B decision-makers already drowning in pitches.
The reality of marketing in 2025 is that costs are climbing while budgets are shrinking.
With buyer journeys becoming more complex, connecting clear ROI to investments in copywriting, content, design, tech operations, and campaign management feels like solving a puzzle with missing pieces.
Meanwhile, average marketing budgets have dropped by 15%. Some companies are spreading their investments across different channels, others are using AI to cut costs, and some are stopping campaigns altogether as markets shift.
This calls for a fresh B2B marketing approach that saves money but still delivers leads.
Enter thought leadership ads.
Metadata reports that their thought leader ads had a CPC of $4.14 compared to $22.54 for brand awareness campaigns built on image and video ads. That’s a revelation!
The AI explosion has unleashed a tsunami of generic content. Many brands have aggressively pushed mediocre material at their audiences, creating a collective sense of content fatigue.
This has left brands holding the short end of the stick when it comes to capturing attention and building trust, as individuals are more inclined to trust other individuals.
Like its social media siblings, LinkedIn now prioritizes individual accounts and user-generated content over corporate content.
LinkedIn mentions that thought leader ads boast a 1.7x higher click-through rate and 1.6x higher engagement rate compared to standard single-image ad campaigns. However, this number can be even higher when TL ads are done right.
In fact, our clients experience CTRs in the range of 4-6 times as compared to traditional ads!
Here’s why:
B2B decision-makers respond better to individuals than brands for several reasons.
Decision-makers crave insights from others walking in similar shoes who've tackled comparable challenges. Fellow executives and founders offer this peer-level perspective.
Decision-makers care less about product features (which brand accounts tend to emphasize) and more about strategic business impact, which experts and founders typically address.
High-level decision-makers face significant time constraints and prefer to learn directly from authoritative sources rather than filtering through marketing content.
Founders and experts address the thorny challenges of implementation and change management with refreshing honesty compared to the polished perfection of brand messaging.
This marketing principle intertwines closely with individuals building trust. Selling isn't just about transactions—it's about connecting with buyers who see you as a trustworthy person, not just another vendor.
When decision-makers encounter a thoughtfully crafted thought leader ad, they begin forming a connection with the actual human behind the content.
LinkedIn allows only two options while choosing the objective of your thought leader ad: Engagement and Brand Awareness.
Accordingly, the metrics you can use to evaluate a TL ad’s success are reactions, followership, and profile views.
In descending order of impact, these are the reposts, comments, dwell time, saves, emoji reactions, and likes to your post. They give you an idea of how well people are engaging with your ad.
This is about how many individuals followed the creator of the ad after viewing it - this contributes to brand awareness.
Along with followership, you should also consider how many people viewed the creator's profile after clicking on the ad. This also makes it crucial to audit the LinkedIn profile of the creator, as it is the conversion engine through which people head to your website.
Kickstarting a thought leader ad on LinkedIn is simple:
Now that we've learned what thought leader ads are and why they matter for your LinkedIn campaign, let's look at some best practices.
You can run thought leader ads through either company team members or external voices (experts or influencers). Both paths require prior approval.
When selecting within your company, choose a credible figure your target audience naturally connects with. For smaller companies, this typically means a founder or founding team member.
It helps if this person already maintains an active LinkedIn presence, as it accelerates results when your audience explores their profile.
Remember this distinction: a thought leader ad is not your typical PPC ad where direct selling takes center stage.
The main goal here is to be relatable and conversational while maintaining authority and authenticity. An overly sales-oriented approach can damage credibility and backfire.
The golden rule: provide value to the user. Without that, you're wasting their time and yours, especially when they have access to plenty of useful information elsewhere.
Select the right format (text/image/carousel/video) and nature of content.
Adding visual elements, even in text-based posts, can boost engagement rates and extend reach. Structure the post and make it as readable as possible.
Thought leader ads come in various types: customer success stories, opinions, case studies, educational content, and achievements.
Pick content that matches your campaign objective and works with your other company ads.
Ensure you are neither too narrow nor too broad in deciding your target audience.
Your target market is companies that need your product, while your target audience is the decision-makers within those companies.
Start by identifying businesses that could benefit from your solution—such as e-commerce, real estate, or healthcare—then narrow your focus to a specific segment for personalization. Once you have a list of target companies, research key decision-makers like CEOs and managers.
Understand where they spend time online, their behaviors, and their preferences. Gather demographic and psychographic insights to create a detailed buyer persona, ensuring your marketing speaks directly to the people who influence purchasing decisions.
Thought leader ads work perfectly for retargeting campaigns, showing valuable content to people who've already shown interest in your company. By showcasing your expertise through your leaders, you guide prospects further down the sales funnel. They're especially useful for ABM strategies where you can be precise with targeting.
As with any marketing approach, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Make thought leader ads part of your overall LinkedIn ads strategy, using them to fill gaps in your other ads. Set specific targets for TL ads and continuously measure and optimize based on performance.
1. This narration of a client experience by Shiyam Sunder, the founder of TripleDart, is written in his own style, offering a first-person perspective:
2. This case study posted through Shiyam’s account offers a detailed, step-by-step perspective on how TripleDart took over the performance marketing of a $60M B2B SaaS company:
Good question. Because "trust me, it works" won't cut it in a budget meeting.
The key is showing ROI. Start with data that demonstrates how thought leadership drives brand awareness, engagement, and leads. Reference case studies showing increased website traffic, higher conversion rates, and improved customer loyalty from TL ads.
Still facing pushback? Compare the cost of TL ad campaigns to traditional brand awareness campaigns (spoiler: TL ads are typically more cost-effective). Emphasize how thought leadership positions your company as an industry authority, which attracts new clients and partnerships.
The bottom line: this isn't an expense—it's an investment in long-term growth that pays dividends.
Time constraints are real. The solution is to streamline the content creation process.
Start by identifying key themes that align with your brand goals and your executives' expertise. Then make content creation painless by scheduling short, focused interviews to gather their insights. These conversations can be turned into multiple pieces of content with minimal time investment from busy leaders.
A 20-minute monthly chat can fuel weeks of thought leadership content that feels authentic because it actually comes from your executives—even if they didn't write every word themselves.
Encourage executives to share authentic experiences while ensuring they align with company values. Develop clear guidelines on how personal stories should connect back to your mission and offerings.
The magic happens when personal credibility enhances corporate messaging—and vice versa. Your executives build their reputation while simultaneously elevating the company's brand. As a result, you get content that feels human and trustworthy, not corporate and stiff.
Remember that authenticity wins. Overly polished, corporate-speak defeats the entire purpose of thought leader ads.
At TripleDart, we’re experts in creating thought leadership strategies, from crafting and producing content for your B2B SaaS brand. We’ve helped several companies get their TL ad strategy right, resulting in high-value leads.
Our LinkedIn experts have turned around the performance of countless brands and have the playbooks and the experience to make it work for you as well. Book a demo now to understand how we can take your LinkedIn campaign to the next level!
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