LinkedIn Ads vs B2B Influencers: Which Channel Performs Better in 2026?

What you’ll find in this guide:

• LinkedIn Ads: Guaranteed Performance but Costly
• B2B Influencers: A Long-Term Strategy
• LinkedIn Ads and B2B Influencers: What Does the Combination Yield?

Every company activating LinkedIn for their B2B strategies faces a central question: should they prioritize LinkedIn Ads or invest in campaigns with B2B influencers? While both channels aim to increase visibility, brand awareness, and commercial performance, their mechanisms, timelines, and impacts differ profoundly.

This is generally the observation we make at first glance. But what if, in reality, both strategies were complementary? We propose to help you better understand how influencer content creation and LinkedIn ads can lead to running the same campaign with better results.

To discover more insights on influencer marketing, download our free Influencer Marketing ebook.

LinkedIn Ads: Guaranteed Performance but Costly

LinkedIn Ads encompasses all advertising options available on the platform: Sponsored Content (sponsored posts), Message Ads (formerly sponsored InMail), Dynamic Ads, Text Ads, and more recently video formats and creator-boosted options like BrandLink. The primary objective is to quickly generate impressions, traffic, or conversions.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of LinkedIn Ads

For B2B brands looking to accelerate lead generation, promote an offering, or support a product launch, LinkedIn Ads remains an extremely powerful lever for several reasons.

LinkedIn allows targeting by industry sector, function/title, company size, location, and even historical behaviors (and segments based on lookalike audiences). The analysis becomes as granular as on other platforms.

On LinkedIn, users are often in a mindset oriented toward opportunities, employment, or professional insights, which means ad campaigns find an audience already open to business messages. Unlike an Instagram or TikTok feed where users consume more "leisure" content, properly segmenting a LinkedIn audience allows you to reach decision-makers in a professional listening state.

One of the major advantages of LinkedIn Ads is conversion tracking through multiple options such as completed contact forms, white paper downloads, demo requests, or event registrations.

Tracking platforms (LinkedIn Campaign Manager, CRM-side tracking, or analytics) allow precise measurement of how much each euro spent returns, making budget decisions clearer and more data-driven.

For more insights on optimizing your B2B strategy, explore our guide on B2B influencer marketing as an essential communication strategy.

Despite its performance, LinkedIn Ads has one limitation: dependence on advertising budget. Once you cut the budget, visibility drops very quickly. In this model, reach, impressions, and conversions are directly correlated to the amount invested in the short term. This works well for a launch, a specific campaign, or a time-limited promotion.

But for lasting impact and reinforced organic presence, the effect dissipates when campaigns are no longer funded.

B2B Influencers: A Long-Term Strategy

B2B influencers are not the same profiles as on Instagram or TikTok. They are often recognized sector experts, executives who speak regularly, consultants, educators, or specialized content creators.

They build audiences around professional topics: strategy, digital transformation, leadership, innovation, HR, finance, etc.

Understanding what a B2B influencer is and their business impact is crucial for leveraging this channel effectively.

B2B Influencers: The Best Strategy

An influencer is not simply a media relay; they are a legitimate voice. Their publications generate conversations, not just clicks. This transforms cold impressions into thoughtful interactions, traffic into qualitative engagement, and audiences into active communities.

This trust relationship is the key to lasting authority, something that simple advertising display cannot produce.

To animate their entire community, creators rely on multiple formats: written posts, carousels, lives, videos, and newsletters. Their subscribers can thus follow their analyses through numerous channels.

Learn more about what types of content B2B influencers post on LinkedIn to maximize engagement.

Unlike Ads, which stop performing once cut, an influencer publication can continue to generate views over time, be re-promoted by the algorithm, rank well in LinkedIn search results, or even on Google. In other words, influence works for the long term.

LinkedIn Ads and B2B Influencers: What Does the Combination Yield?

As you understand, advertising activations and influence campaigns operate on different timelines. Therefore, they can easily become complementary. Here's how at Les Années Folles, we've already designed influence campaigns that mix both:

• First, content creators are solicited. They create their publications, whether in video, written, or carousel format.
• Meanwhile, the brand publishes a similar campaign on its profile.
• At a strong moment in the campaign, such as a key date or before an event, the brand proposes to the influencer to boost their post via LinkedIn's ads tool. The post can thus gain visibility with a target audience over a defined time period. By turning to LinkedIn's advertising tool this way, the brand intensifies its visibility during a key moment, leaving the rest of the time for organic publications to take over.

To implement this effectively, check out our 5 steps to launch a successful B2B influencer marketing campaign on LinkedIn.

B2B influence and LinkedIn ads were designed to be complementary. By combining both, you benefit from boosted visibility and access to performance data that shouldn't be neglected. Ads can also help generate more leads.

So let's stop comparing them and putting them in opposition. Ads excel in immediate performance and rapid lead generation. B2B influence excels in building trust and long-term engagement.

At Les Années Folles, we've developed this expertise. In 2026, [contact our agency team](about us) to create a custom B2B influence campaign, intelligently integrating ads.

To discover our recent campaigns, explore our client case studies.

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