LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads let a company pay to promote a post written by a person (an executive, an employee, a customer or a creator) instead of a company page post. The author approves, the ad runs from your Campaign Manager account, and it supports the brand awareness, engagement and video views objectives. They cost more per impression than company page ads but earn about the same click rate.
That last point decides how to use them. Thought Leader Ads are a way to put a named expert in front of a target account list, again and again, with a post people read and react to. They are a poor way to buy cheap website visits. The rest of this page covers the rules as LinkedIn’s help pages state them today, the setup steps, the cost data, and where they fit next to the rest of your LinkedIn ads.
What are LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads?
A Thought Leader Ad is a person’s organic post, sponsored by a company. Viewers see the author’s name and photo, the post as they wrote it, and the likes and comments it has already collected. LinkedIn’s Thought Leader Ads help page lists the posts you can promote: employees’ posts, creators’ posts, and posts from other members, all with the author’s permission.
| Thought Leader Ad | Company page ad (Sponsored Content) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who appears as the poster | The person who wrote the post | Your company page |
| Who writes the copy | The author, from an existing public post | Your team, in Campaign Manager |
| Objectives | Brand awareness, engagement, video views | All Sponsored Content objectives, including website visits and lead generation |
| Call-to-action button | Not on single image, video or document ads | Yes |
| Editing | You cannot change the post or duplicate the ad | Full control |
| Permission needed | Yes, from the author, for each post (or all posts if they turn on auto-approval) | No |
Source for the Thought Leader Ad column: LinkedIn help pages on Thought Leader Ads and on creating them in Campaign Manager, re-checked on 30 October 2026.
Who is eligible to run Thought Leader Ads?
Eligibility has three parts: the person setting up the ad, the author, and the post.
The person building the campaign needs super admin, content admin or Sponsored Content poster access on the company page linked to the ad account, and creative manager access or higher on the ad account itself. If the ad account is tied to a Showcase Page, the roles have to be on the parent company page.
The author can be an employee, a creator or another member. Their profile must show their full name, and they have to approve the request (one post at a time, or all pending and future requests at once).
The post must be public. These post types qualify:
| Eligible | Not eligible |
|---|---|
| Text posts | Polls |
| Single image posts | Multi-image posts |
| Video posts | Celebrations |
| Document posts (PDF carousels) | Reposts (sponsor the original post instead, with its author’s permission) |
| LinkedIn articles and newsletters | |
| Eligible collaborative posts | |
| Event posts from attendees of a LinkedIn Live event your page created |
The table follows LinkedIn’s Thought Leader Ads help page. Document posts are now on the eligible list, so a founder’s slide carousel can run as a Thought Leader Ad on brand awareness or engagement, without a call-to-action button. Multi-image posts and polls are the formats to avoid when you plan posts you may want to sponsor.
How do you set up a Thought Leader Ad in Campaign Manager?
LinkedIn’s setup guide groups the work into three stages: permissions, the ad set and the ad. In order, the steps are these. LinkedIn now calls the level that holds budget, audience and objective an ad set.
- Check your access. Confirm the page role and ad account role listed above.
- Create or edit an ad set. Choose brand awareness, engagement or video views as the objective, and pick the ad format that matches the post: single image, video, document, newsletter or article, or event.
- Browse existing content. On the “Ads in this ad set” page, click “Browse existing content”.
- Find the post. In the Content Library, choose “LinkedIn members”, open the Posts tab and search by the member’s name or the post URL. Here you can only search people who work at your company or are your 1st or 2nd-degree connections. For anyone further out, use Creator Marketplace.
- Request approval. Select the post, click “Request approval”, then Send. You can also open “View request” and copy the link to send it to the author yourself. The Requests tab shows each request as approved, declined or pending.
- Launch once approved. The author gets an email; when they approve, Campaign Manager notifies you and the post can run.
Two habits make approval painless: ask the author to approve all future requests if you plan to sponsor them often, and agree with them which posts you will promote before you send requests, so approval is a formality. LinkedIn’s Thought Leader Ads page also suggests the author save their organic results before the campaign starts, because the post’s metrics will then mix organic and paid.
In Campaign Manager, Thought Leader Ads report two extra metrics, according to the Thought Leader Ads help page: member follows and clicks to the member’s profile.
What do LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads cost?
There is no separate price list. Thought Leader Ads go through the same auction as every LinkedIn ad, where, as LinkedIn’s pricing help page puts it, the cost to win “depends on the desirability of your target audience.” What you pay for (impressions, clicks or video views) depends on the bidding strategy, which our guide to LinkedIn ads pricing explains.
The most detailed public cost data is Kiin’s LinkedIn CPM benchmark: 2,563 thought leader ad campaigns across 464 accounts, inside a $31 million panel of mostly US B2B tech advertisers, from 8 September 2025 to 7 September 2026. Kiin is a LinkedIn ads agency, and its figures are medians.
| Measure | Thought Leader Ads | Company page ads | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median CPM, engagement objective | $65 | n/a | 212 accounts |
| Top-quartile CPM | $36 | n/a | Kiin’s “good” level |
| CPM, paired within the same accounts | $74.71 | $48.80 | Single image company page ads |
| Landing page click-through rate, paired | 0.449% | 0.441% | Effectively the same |
| Median cost per landing page click | $14.71 | $11.75 | Company page figure is single image on the website visits objective |
| Video cost per landing page click | $32.34 | $12.01 | Company page figure is video on website visits |
Source: Kiin, LinkedIn CPM benchmarks, USD, LinkedIn Audience Network excluded; figures re-checked on 30 October 2026.
Read the paired rows together. In the same accounts, Thought Leader Ads cost about 53% more per thousand impressions and earned the same share of landing page clicks. Kiin’s conclusion is that the premium buys engagement and attention on the post, not cheaper traffic. For comparison, Metadata’s 2025 B2B benchmark puts the median LinkedIn CPM across all formats at $63.19 and the median CPC at $9.39 across 138 advertisers.
When are Thought Leader Ads worth the premium?
They are worth it when the goal is that a defined group of buyers knows a specific person at your company and trusts what they say. They are not worth it when the goal is form fills this month.
| Goal | Better choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Make 300 target accounts familiar with your founder’s view before outbound starts | Thought Leader Ads | The post, the face and the comments do the work; frequency matters more than clicks |
| Build a retargeting pool of people who engaged | Thought Leader Ads on engagement | Engaged members can be retargeted later with company page ads |
| Promote a webinar or LinkedIn Live event | Event Thought Leader Ads | The event format is the one Thought Leader Ad that keeps a button |
| Get demo requests or downloads | Company page ads on website visits or lead generation | Thought Leader Ads do not support those objectives, and company page single image ads had the cheapest landing page click in Kiin’s data |
| Promote a founder’s PDF carousel | Document Thought Leader Ad | Document posts are eligible; use a company page document ad instead if you need a lead gen form or a button |
The real constraint is supply. A Thought Leader Ad can only be as good as the organic post behind it, and you cannot edit that post. Plan for an author who posts several times a week, so there are always two or three recent posts with real comments to choose from. That is the part our LinkedIn ghostwriting service handles: posts in each person’s own words, drafted from short calls, three a week, each approved by the author.
How do you plan a Thought Leader Ad campaign?
Illustrative, not a benchmark. Tallyhawk, a fictional spend management software company, wants the finance leaders at 900 target accounts to see posts from its CFO about closing the books faster. It counts about 6 relevant people per account and wants each to see a sponsored post 4 times a month.
| Step | Math | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | 900 accounts x 6 people | 5,400 people |
| Impressions a month | 5,400 x 4 | 21,600 impressions |
| Budget at the $65 median TLA CPM | $65 x 21,600 / 1,000 | $1,404 a month |
| Budget at Kiin’s under-10,000-audience engagement CPM ($110.66) | $110.66 x 21,600 / 1,000 | $2,390 a month |
An audience of 5,400 people is under Kiin’s 10,000-person line, where its engagement-objective CPM median is $110.66, so Tallyhawk should plan on the higher number. Run your own reach and frequency through our CPM calculator. The CFO needs at least 12 posts a month to give the campaign a choice of what to sponsor, and Tallyhawk should judge it on two numbers: the share of target accounts that engaged, and the pipeline those accounts create in the following quarter.
What should you measure?
- Engagement from target accounts. Use LinkedIn’s company-level reporting to see which accounts on your list engaged. That is the point of the campaign.
- Follows and profile clicks for the author. These are the two metrics LinkedIn reports for Thought Leader Ads only, and they show whether the person is becoming known.
- Pipeline from engaged accounts. Compare opportunity creation in accounts that engaged with those that did not, over a full quarter. Our paid ads service reads these results in your CRM each week and moves spend to the campaigns that book calls.
- Not CPC alone. Kiin’s data shows Thought Leader Ads do not lower the cost of a landing page click. If CPC is the goal, use company page ads.
For more on building a person’s voice before you pay to amplify it, see our glossary entry on thought leadership and our SaaS LinkedIn marketing playbook.
Frequently asked
What are LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads?
Thought Leader Ads are LinkedIn posts written by a person, such as a founder, an employee, a customer or a creator, that a company pays to show to a target audience. The ad keeps the person's name, photo and post text, and runs from the company's ad account in Campaign Manager after the author approves it.
Can you sponsor posts from people who do not work at your company?
Yes. LinkedIn lets you sponsor posts from employees, creators and members who are 1st, 2nd or 3rd-degree-plus connections, as long as they approve the request. In Campaign Manager you can search posts from employees and 1st or 2nd-degree connections; for 3rd-degree-plus members you search through Creator Marketplace.
How much do LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads cost?
They are bought in the same auction as other LinkedIn ads, with no fixed price. Kiin's benchmark of 2,563 thought leader ad campaigns (September 2025 to September 2026) found a median CPM of $65 on the engagement objective and a median $14.71 per landing page click. Paired within the same accounts, thought leader ads cost $74.71 per 1,000 impressions against $48.80 for company page ads.
Which campaign objectives work with Thought Leader Ads?
Brand awareness, engagement and video views. Single image, document, article and newsletter, and event ads run on brand awareness and engagement; video ads can also use video views. LinkedIn's help pages do not list website visits or lead generation for Thought Leader Ads, so use company page ads for those goals.
Can you add a call-to-action button to a Thought Leader Ad?
Not on single image, video or document Thought Leader Ads. LinkedIn says those formats have no call-to-action button, so any link has to sit in the post text. Event Thought Leader Ads do include a button. You also cannot duplicate a Thought Leader Ad.
What happens if the author withdraws permission?
The ad turns off right away and you are notified in Campaign Manager. If the ad set holds other ads, it keeps delivering them; if not, it stays active but stops delivering. Authors can approve one request at a time or approve all pending and future requests at once.
