CALIFORNIA: LinkedIn wants more of your advertising budget. And it is building the machinery to come and get it.
The Microsoft-owned professional network has unveiled BrandWorks, a newly assembled in-house team of marketing experts designed to deliver higher-performing ad campaigns for business clients. According to a source familiar with the matter, the unit is expected to generate an annualised run rate of $100m in the next fiscal year — a bold target for a platform that currently holds just 1 per cent of global digital ad revenue.
BrandWorks was launched internally in March and has grown aggressively since, with its team expanding by roughly 60 per cent in the past several months through targeted hires from TikTok, Meta and X. Its clients already include enterprise heavyweights such as SAP, IBM and ServiceNow, and it runs a programme called Top Voices 360 that pairs advertisers with creators for sponsored content. That programme alone drove more than $20m in revenue from May 2025 to May 2026.
Alex Josephson, vice-president of BrandWorks, who previously built a similar offering called Twitter Next, framed the pitch plainly. “We’re developing services that are designed to meet the marketer where they are,” he said.
The timing is deliberate. LinkedIn has carved out a defensible niche by targeting businesses seeking enterprise clients, a market where it faces far less competition than in consumer advertising dominated by Meta. US B2B social ad spending is expected to reach $11.64bn by 2027, according to research firm Emarketer, with growth forecast to remain steady. LinkedIn’s annual revenue reached $17.81bn in fiscal 2025, growing at double digits — and the platform clearly believes there is more to come.
Video is central to the growth strategy. LinkedIn is pushing publishers and creators to post more video alongside which advertisers can run campaigns through its BrandLink programme. The company expects BrandLink revenue to nearly triple in the current fiscal year, though it declined to share the actual figure. Video posts from chief executives have already jumped 68 per cent on the platform over the past two years, a trend that suits LinkedIn’s pitch to advertisers perfectly.
Gen Z is providing additional tailwind. “Gen Z is our fastest-growing demographic on the platform. They are our fastest-growing in terms of engagement with content,” said Josephson.
The broader context flatters LinkedIn’s ambitions. Google commands 26.4 per cent of global digital ad revenue, Facebook 16 per cent and Instagram 10.5 per cent. LinkedIn sits at a modest 1 per cent. Luke Stillman, a managing director at trend advisory firm Madison and Wall, noted that “80 per cent of B2B budgets go into search and social media, with Google and LinkedIn the primary beneficiaries of those B2B dollars.”
One per cent of a very large pie is still a great deal of money. LinkedIn has decided it wants a considerably bigger slice.
(Source: Reuters)
