Thought Leader Ad Opportunities Highlighted in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

Key Highlights

• Feature Update: LinkedIn has streamlined the process for activating Thought Leader Ads within the app.
• Expanded Reach: Brands can now promote user-generated content from any user, not just employees.
• Improved Discovery: The new system helps marketers identify relevant posts more easily for sponsored content.
• Potential Earnings: Future monetization options may allow creators to earn from their contributions to Thought Leader Ads.

LinkedIn’s making it easier to activate Thought Leader Ads in the app, via a simplified discovery and promotion process built into Campaign Manager that will enable you to easily find relevant posts to boost.

LinkedIn’s Thought Leader Ads enable brands to boost user-generated content, providing a means to amplify positive comments from their audience. LinkedIn expanded Thought Leader Ads to posts from any user (as opposed to only employees) in March last year, while it added Thought Leader Ads for events in August.

And now, it’s looking to improve the discovery element, to deliver more opportunities for UGC promotions.

As explained by LinkedIn:

“With simplified content discovery in Campaign Manager, marketers can easily search and identify expert voices across 1st, 2nd, and now 3rd+ degree connections and sponsor organic posts mentioning their brand or event – expanding collaboration beyond their immediate network.”

As you can see in this example, now, LinkedIn will highlight relevant posts that mention your brand or event, which you can seek to use as sponsored content.

“Discoverable posts include employee posts, LinkedIn articles, or newsletter articles, from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree+ connections. With sponsorship permission from the content author or creator, you can promote posts relevant to your brand or product and use them to create thought leader ad campaigns.”

So you will need to secure approval from the creator, but if they’re okay with it, you can now more easily find relevant opportunities to showcase your brand via external endorsements and commentary.

And it could be a valuable consideration. LinkedIn says that its Thought Leader Ads see 2x higher click-through rates on average than other single-image ads with the same objective.

It could also, eventually, provide a pathway for LinkedIn creators to get paid for their in-app efforts, by providing revenue share from Thought Leader Ads with each individual user.

That’s not currently a part of the process, but the introduction of improved discovery could be another step towards building a monetization pathway for creators, by incentivizing them to post about brands, products, and events, which will then be highlighted as sponsored content opportunities.

Though that would also incentivize positive commentary, and that may not be the ideal promotional driver. But either way, LinkedIn is clearly exploring creator monetization pathways, and these specific highlights, putting those opportunities in front of brands, will play a part in that broader push.

LinkedIn says that sponsored content opportunities will be displayed in the “Partnerships” tab in Campaign Manager. Brands will be able to filter this list by content type, then send a request to the author to launch a sponsored campaign.

The new display is being rolled out in select countries, with further expansion planned “in the coming months.” More info here.