If you're a founder posting on LinkedIn, someone has probably told you to "put money behind your best posts". LinkedIn has a product built for exactly that: Thought Leader Ads. The question is whether it's a smart use of a founder-led company's budget, or an expensive way to buy likes.
We pulled together what LinkedIn itself publishes about the format and what the two largest independent 2026 benchmark studies found. Every number below links to its source, and we've noted the sample and dates so you can judge them for yourself.
What is a LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad?
A Thought Leader Ad is a LinkedIn ad that promotes a post from a person's profile rather than from a company page. LinkedIn says you can use it to promote content from members, creators or employees of your company (LinkedIn Help: Thought Leader Ads). For a founder, that usually means your company sponsors your own posts, so they appear in the feed of people outside your network, labelled as promoted.
The practical rules, from LinkedIn's help page (LinkedIn Help):
- You need permission from the person who wrote the post, and their profile must show their full name. The post must be public.
- You can promote text, single image, video, document, article and newsletter posts. Celebrations, polls, multi-image posts and reposts aren't eligible.
- There's no call-to-action button on single image, video or document Thought Leader Ads, although URLs can be added to the intro text.
- Available objectives are brand awareness and engagement, plus video views for video posts.
- Campaign Manager reports two metrics specific to the format: member follows and clicks to the member's profile.
What does LinkedIn say about Thought Leader Ad performance?
When LinkedIn announced new Live Event features in October 2024, it said Thought Leader Ads were "generating 2.3x higher click-through-rate (CTR) compared to single image ads" (LinkedIn Pressroom, 14 Oct 2024).
The same announcement shared LinkedIn's "Business of Influence" research, in which GWI surveyed more than 1,700 B2B tech buyers in the US, UK and India between 22 May and 11 June 2024. Among respondents who use industry influencers in their purchase journey, 53% said subject matter expertise is the most important trait for a B2B influencer, and 67% of those who consume B2B influencer content said expert content helps build brand trust (LinkedIn Pressroom).
That second finding is the real reason the format exists. Buyers trust people who clearly know their subject more than they trust a logo. A founder is usually the most credible expert a small B2B company has.
What do independent 2026 benchmarks show?
Two large studies of real ad accounts were published this year. They measure slightly different things, so it's worth reading them side by side.
Kiin Labs: 464 accounts, $8.4M of Thought Leader Ad spend
Kiin Labs analysed 2,563 Thought Leader Ad campaigns across 464 accounts between 8 September 2025 and 7 September 2026, mostly B2B tech advertisers, with LinkedIn Audience Network excluded (Kiin Labs, published 13 Sep 2026). Its benchmark medians across 212 engagement-objective accounts:
- Total click-through rate, LinkedIn's default field: 4.56%.
- Landing page click-through rate: 0.46% (good: 0.67%).
- Engagement rate: 4.46% (good: 6.44%).
- Cost per landing page click: $14.71 (good: $8.37).
- CPM: $65 (good: $36).
The headline finding is that 91% of the clicks LinkedIn reports on Thought Leader Ads never reach a landing page, because reactions, comments, "see more" and profile visits all count as clicks (Kiin Labs).
ZenABM: 2,828 ads across 211 companies
ZenABM analysed 2,828 ads across 211 companies for its 2026 LinkedIn ABM Benchmarks Report. It found a median Thought Leader Ad CTR of 2.68% against 0.42% for single image ads, which it describes as 6.4 times higher. But its click-through rate to the landing page for Thought Leader Ads was 0.43%, almost identical to the single image figure (ZenABM, updated 21 Feb 2026).
What the two studies agree on
Strip out the engagement clicks and Thought Leader Ads drive website visits at roughly the same rate as ordinary ads. Kiin found landing page click rates of 0.449% for Thought Leader Ads and 0.441% for company page sponsored content, with the difference in cost coming from a higher CPM (Kiin Labs). The format's real advantage is attention: people stop, read and engage with a person far more than with a brand.
Why does the founder matter more than the ad?
This is the finding founders should pay most attention to. In Kiin's data, the identity of the author explained 67% of the variation in engagement across accounts. The top tenth of authors averaged 10.55% engagement and the bottom tenth 1.22%, an 8.6 times spread. No hook style, post length or link decision held up once the author was held constant, and boosting an organic post performed no differently from a purpose-built ad (Kiin Labs).
Kiin is careful to say it couldn't test founders against employees, because role wasn't in its data. So treat this as a strong signal, not a verdict: what you pay to promote matters less than whose post it is and how much standing that person already has with the audience.
Timing matters too. LinkedIn's B2B Institute research on the 95:5 rule says 95% of your potential buyers aren't ready to buy today (LinkedIn B2B Institute). A Thought Leader Ad that a buyer reads and remembers can pay off months later, which is why judging the format on this week's website clicks undersells it.
When should a founder use Thought Leader Ads?
Based on the sources above, here's a practical checklist. Treat the specific thresholds as one agency's published operating rules from its own data, not LinkedIn guidance.
- Promote posts that already work. Kiin found an author's early posts strongly predicted their later ones, and boosting made no difference to results, so you're amplifying a proven voice, not rescuing a weak post.
- Match the objective to the audience. Kiin's rule from its data: brand awareness on cold audiences of 30,000 or more, and engagement on retargeting pools, uploaded lists and anything under 10,000 people (Kiin Labs).
- Filter by seniority. Kiin measured CXOs engaging at 4.42% against 3.46% for senior individual contributors, at a similar cost per landing page click. Yet 79% of the spend in its panel set no seniority filter at all (Kiin Labs).
- Watch frequency, not the calendar. Engagement fell 9% once the whole audience had seen an ad once, and an audience under 10,000 people reached that point in a median of 14 days (Kiin Labs).
- Measure the right numbers. Report on engagement rate, cost per engagement and cost per landing page click, not total CTR (Kiin Labs).
- Keep weekends on and Audience Network off. Kiin found weekend landing page click rates 9 to 10% higher, and conversions per landing page click of 14.80% off Audience Network against 1.68% on it (Kiin Labs).
How much does it cost a founder to reach their market?
Kiin modelled the cost of reaching half of a target audience at observed median CPMs: about $1,752 for an audience of 9,800 people and about $3,544 for 27,000 people (Kiin Labs). The median account in its panel spent $4,345 a year on Thought Leader Ads. For a founder-led company with a tightly defined buyer list, that's a modest test budget, as long as the posts being promoted are genuinely useful.
When are Thought Leader Ads the wrong tool?
- When you need website visits above all. In Kiin's data, company page sponsored content on the website visits objective had the lowest median landing page click cost at $11.75, against $13.51 for single image engagement Thought Leader Ads (Kiin Labs).
- When you aren't posting consistently. Ads can amplify a voice; they can't create one.
- When your posts don't speak to buyers. Promoting content written for peers just buys reach with the wrong audience.
How Influx approaches founder distribution
At Influx we write a founder's posts in their voice and get each one in front of the buyers they want to reach, not just their existing network. Distribution is included, with no ad spend (The Influx Authority Engine). If a client later wants to put budget behind their best posts, the data above is how we'd think about it: build the voice first, then amplify what's already working.
We hold ourselves to an outcome, not an impression count. We guarantee 30 qualified sales calls in 90 days. If we don't hit it, we keep working at no cost until we do. (The Influx Guarantee Explained)
Alex Alleyne, our founder, was named a LinkedIn Top Voice in Sales in 2019 and 2020, and booked 30 qualified calls in his first 90 days running this system on his own LinkedIn (About Alex Alleyne).
About Influx
Alex Alleyne is the founder of Influx, a two-time LinkedIn Top Voice with over 60,000 followers on LinkedIn. Influx is a done-for-you LinkedIn authority system for founder-led B2B firms that turns a founder's expertise into qualified sales calls, with content written in their voice and distributed to their buyers. Influx, the LinkedIn authority firm, is operated by Fetched L.L.C-FZ in Dubai, UAE, and is not affiliated with other companies called Influx.
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