INSIGHTS FROM EXPERTS ON LINKEDIN
Philip Ilic shares how aggressive lead gen ads can spike results fast, then fall apart as audiences burn out and costs climb. He argues long-term growth needs more middle-of-funnel spend, especially thought leader and content distribution ads that build demand before the lead shows up. Better measurement of influenced pipeline makes it much easier to prove this strategy actually works.
Peep Laja breaks down the growing gap between rising growth targets and flat or shrinking budgets, with broken attribution making it worse. He warns that cutting brand to chase short-term pipeline creates a short-lived spike and long-term damage. Brand isn’t a nice-to-have, and boards asking for instant growth without insight aren’t asking for strategy, they’re asking for magic.
Bruno Bin points out that most buyers already have a shortlist before they ever fill out a form, making late-stage tactics far less impactful than teams think. He argues winning brands invest earlier in thought leadership, customer stories, and community to shape that shortlist. The real goal isn’t clicks, it’s being remembered when the buying moment arrives.
Mary McPartlan Ford explains that many buyers never click ads or reply to outbound, but they still notice and remember brands that consistently show up. She highlights how reading posts, emails, and quietly observing builds mental real estate over time. Consistent visibility is what earns a spot on the buyer’s day-one shortlist.
Kirill Vdov explains why industry targeting on LinkedIn creates bloated, low-quality audiences and wastes budget. He walks through how to build proper company lists using CSVs, sales input, and enrichment tools, and why LinkedIn’s native company targeting falls short. Smaller, tighter lists give you more control, better match rates, and less spend leakage.
Marc Binkley challenges the idea that brands can “hack” their way to growth, especially when it comes to market share. He breaks down why most growth comes from external forces, not media efficiency, and why reach is constrained by revenue. Creative effectiveness ends up being the only lever marketers can realistically improve on their own.
Chuck Moxley shares how gated content generated expensive, low-quality leads and blocked real interest from engaging. After ungating everything and shifting reporting to pipeline and revenue, demo requests, engagement, and revenue all surged. The switch also proved that people are more willing to share real information once they actually see value.
Alice de Courcy outlines how she would run 1:1 ABM for high-ACV enterprise deals, starting only with active opportunity accounts. She stresses weekly sales alignment, persona-level personalization, and real-time signals to stay responsive. Personalized demo experiences, she notes, are where this approach starts to feel genuinely differentiated.
Pierre Herubel talks about the tension founders feel to generate leads fast while knowing most buyers aren’t ready yet. They explain why relying only on lead gen burns out quickly and how demand gen builds familiarity over time through content, community, and visibility. The point is to stop treating it as either/or and build a system where demand creation and demand capture work together toward revenue.
Violeta Balbae breaks down Google’s new multi-campaign experiment feature that lets advertisers test entire account structures at once. Instead of comparing single campaigns, teams can now test budget splits and mixes across Search, PMax, Demand Gen, and more. It’s a shift toward making bigger, system-level decisions based on data rather than assumptions.
Kevin Goodwin explains that reach isn’t the goal – it’s just a tool to grow a business. He warns that it’s easy to scale reach in ways that don’t matter, like hitting the wrong audience or low-quality placements. To keep reach tied to growth, he shares leading indicators like new customer sessions, brand search, and direct traffic that show whether awareness is actually working.
Lena Weber-Reed shares how stepping into a Head of Digital role changed how she thinks about success. She argues that clicks and dashboards can look great, but they don’t matter if buying still feels risky or confusing. The real job is making it easier for buyers to trust, align internally, and feel confident choosing you.
Preston 
Rutherford jokes his way through a very real problem: convincing CFOs that brand matters. He lays out a list of articles, charts, investor quotes, and studies that speak CFO language and flip skepticism into support. It’s a practical playbook for defending brand budgets with arguments finance leaders actually respect.
David Zeff 
reflects on why this year feels different, pointing to a shift away from automation-heavy selling toward trust and real relationships. He talks about why generic outbound is failing, why founders unlock more in face-to-face time, and why differentiation is no longer optional. His focus for the year is less dashboards, more partnerships, and building trust at the top.
Nick Kashty reacts to OpenAI testing paid ads inside the platform and what that could change for B2B. He expects ads to be driven by conversation context rather than user data, leaning more toward awareness and mid-funnel plays than direct response. The big unknown is how far OpenAI will push ads and how aggressively Google responds.
WHAT'S NEW IN THE INDUSTRY
Google has rolled out a new podcast, Ads Decoded, hosted by Ginny Marvin to explain how Google Ads works behind the scenes. It covers topics like learning phases, keywords, and how AI impacts campaign decisions, straight from the teams building the platform. It’s meant to be practical, clear, and useful for anyone running Google Ads.
Google has added the ability to exclude Website Visitor and Customer Match lists from Performance Max campaigns. This gives advertisers real control over separating prospecting from remarketing instead of relying on signals alone. It’s a meaningful update for anyone trying to run cleaner, more intentional PMax strategies.
TikTok upgraded Smart+ with better creative selection, full ad previews, and workflow tools like drafts, duplication, and bulk edits. Advertisers can now see exactly how ads will appear and use automation without losing visibility or brand control. The updates aim to make Smart+ feel less like a black box and more like a usable performance system.
New research with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute shows GenAI buyers only seriously consider about 2.4 brands. That means the winners won’t be the companies with the best models, but the ones that build strong mental availability. The report breaks down how buyers choose, which brands are winning mindshare, and where there’s still room to stand out.
Google has once again said it has no plans to add ads to Gemini, stressing trust and assistant quality over monetization. This puts Google on a different path from OpenAI, which is starting to test ads in ChatGPT. For advertisers, it signals that conversational AI ad inventory from Google won’t arrive anytime soon and will likely be limited when it does.
Meta is expanding ads on Threads to users worldwide, opening access to its 400+ million monthly active users. Advertisers can run Threads ads through Meta’s existing ad tools, with support for multiple formats and third-party brand safety checks. Delivery will start small, but early adopters could benefit as the platform scales.
Google Ads is introducing Campaign Mix Experiments, allowing advertisers to test multiple campaign types and budget splits in one experiment. Instead of optimizing channels in isolation, marketers can now see how Search, PMax, Demand Gen, and more work together. It’s a shift toward testing full systems, not just individual campaigns.
That’s the scoop for this week! If you found this valuable and any useful insights caught your eye, feel free to share them with your network.
Until next week!
