Hey friend,
Last week, I broke down the paid ad strategy I recommend B2Bs run this year to get serious ROI.
We covered the foundation: targeting, messaging, attribution, tracking, budget splits, and the 95:5 rule. If you haven't read that yet, go read it now because everything in this newsletter builds on those foundations.
Time for part 2 of our 2026 ad strategy playbook.
Today, we’re talking about the ingredients that go into your campaigns: creative formats, platform-specific tactics, when to expand channels, and how to troubleshoot when things aren't working.
Let’s cook 👇
Ditch Polished Ads For Native Ad Formats
This is the main takeaway from today’s newsletter: most of the time… people don’t like being shown ads!
Polished, on-brand single-image ads performed pretty poorly in 2025. We had 4X higher CAC across our accounts with these ads, even with the fact that we did a great job of creating them (some of those had 3% click-through rates, which is insane!)
Real results from last year’s campaigns. Those polished, on-brand ads weren’t cheap! 😬
The ads that did work extremely well were native ad formats that blended in with the feed.
That’s why I recommend you run these ad types in your demand generation layer this year 👇
1. Ungated Document Ads
I'm bullish on these in 2026 because not a lot of companies run them, especially in combination with the right campaign objectives.
Because your competitors aren’t trying to buy up this inventory, CPMs are much lower. This allows you to get in front of much more of your target audience to build recall and mental availability so that out-market prospects think of you when they move in-market.
The setup:
Test pain point topics on organic LinkedIn posts first to see what resonates with your target audience
Create PDF documents that tackle the most problems your audience is trying to solve
Create campaigns using the doc ad format and engagement objective
Use manual bidding set to at least ~20% lower than recommended bid
Run it in your demand generation layer targeting cold audiences
At the end of the document, add your core marketing offer CTA. For us, that's a free marketing plan request.
2. Thought Leader Ads
These get much higher CTR and reach than single-image ads.
People trust people more than brands, so one of the highest ROI moves you can make for your paid program is to get your founder, head of product, or any prominent person in your company to write some LinkedIn content and put some spend behind it.
It blows my mind that 95% of B2Bs still aren’t running Thought Leader Ads. If you just rely on organic reach, most of your ICP will miss your content… no matter how good it is.
The setup:
Create a list of the most common pain points your target audience is facing. Add it to a spreadsheet. For each pain point, summarize your POV on the problem and the solution you provide. Add these into new columns.
Aim for 7-10 common pain points (problems that move your audience from out-market to in-market) and write 1-2 posts per pain point. This gives you 10-15 posts targeting your ICP with content that actually matters to them.
Publish 1 post per day over the next 2 weeks. Let them build organic engagement for 48-72 hours.
Then, add the best performing posts to a Thought Leader Ad campaign in LinkedIn Ads with these settings:
Objective: Brand awareness (only objective that maximizes reach)
Optimization goal: Reach (not impressions)
Audience Exclusions: Reverse ICP targeting + competitors + existing customers
Bid strategy: Maximum delivery
Audience expansion: OFF (trust me on this one)
Ad format: Single image as it allows text-only posts
Add a P.S. section at the end with a short description of your main offer, include a link, and publish!
This post I turned into a Thought Leader Ad ended up being one of our biggest drivers of closed/won deals for us last year:
This single Thought Leader Ad influenced $480k in ARR in 2025. These are extremely easy to replicate in your own marketing program and throw some spend behind!
3. CTV Ads
Connected TV (CTV) ads on LinkedIn have dramatically lower CPMs than feed placements and work for brand building at scale.
The goal isn't to convert your ICP while they're watching CTV ads on Netflix or Hulu. CTV works because it buys up space in your ICP's memory bank so when they need a product or service your brand offers, you'll be top of mind.
The setup:
Build Your Audience from Closed Deals. Pull data from your last 12-24 months of closed deals. Identify company size, industries, geographies, and tech stack of actual buyers.
Analyze Role-Level Patterns. Look for seniorities, specific titles, who submitted forms, who was on calls, who signed contract. Then, use a third-party tool like Primer to build this audience and import it into Campaign Manager.
Base Messaging On Your Research. Agitate a real problem for your ICP, whether the creative is high production value or just a Zoom recording. Then tie the ICP's pain point back to your business: what would it feel like to solve this problem?
Engineer Reach + Frequency. For CTV campaigns, aim to reach 50%+ of your ICP every 30 days:
Campaign objective: Brand Awareness
Optimize for: Reach (not views or engagement)
Frequency cap: Set it to 3. This forces the algorithm to distribute ads broadly instead of concentrating on the most-engaged users.
If budget is tight, think about how to maximize content you already have or would be a low lift to create. Even an audiogram mashed together from customer calls will work surprisingly well!
Example of a super simple (and wildly effective) CTV ad we made with customer call recordings. Think outside the box on how you can run CTV ads if you don’t have budget for expensive video shoots!
Don’t Forget About Retargeting Ads
For retargeting, single images work better if you put in the work to build trust with out-market audiences.
The best ads to target these audiences when they move in-market are either cost of inaction ads or ads that promised a desirable outcome, like this 👇
Stats like this work really well in a retargeting layer if you hit someone when they are weighing up a buying decision.
To run these ads, pull any standout statistics or wins from case studies to use as a proof point in your visual asset. Then, add to your retargeting layer.
Running Google Ads? Keep It Simple
So many B2Bs overthink Google Ads copy (and Google Ads in general) and spend too much time trying to make ads sound creative and clever.
My advice is to just create ads that explain the problem you solve, who you solve it for, and how you solve it.
Put the keyword in the headline
Google Ads is a jobs-to-be-done platform. Your main aim when placing ads here must be to match your headline to the exact search query, then match landing pages to those keywords.
Checks notes: Keyword in headline ✔️
If you can't prove to people who click your ads that you can help them achieve the specific outcome you promised, they’ll bounce and go to somebody else. If someone searches "sales forecasting software," they better land on a page about sales forecasting software and how the product helps that specific audience, not just a generic homepage about forecasting software.
Use All-Star Campaign Structures
If you already have offline conversion tracking in place, look at which keywords are already converting to pipeline and push more spend into those. If you don't have that tracking set up yet, use Ahrefs or Semrush to find transactional keywords and then:
Start with exact match. This is very important. If you layer in phrase match or broad match, it puts your ads in front of a lot of low-quality inventory which will bring in a lot of leads that sales hate. Marketers don’t need that heat 😂
After 90 days, cut the fat. Take note of keywords with the lowest CPA that convert to pipeline and closed deals. Move the best performers into the All-Star campaign.
Then, push 60-80% of search budget there and leave the rest for testing new keywords.
This strategy concentrates spend on what's already proven to work while you test new keywords in a separate experimental campaign. The result will be lower overall acquisition costs from Google search ads and increased pipeline as you centralize budget around keywords most likely to convert.
When To Look Beyond LinkedIn + Google
Most B2Bs don't need to expand out of LinkedIn and Google. I would really focus on maxing those as much as possible as there’s usually a load of juice left to squeeze in terms of pipeline and building awareness.
However, there are some signals to follow that will tell you it's time to move into different channels.
LinkedIn. If you hit 80%+ penetration here and don’t want to target new segments, that’s a good signal it's time to explore new channels
Google. If your list of high-intent keywords has 90% impression share (or it's getting very difficult to increase it because of competition), that's a green light it's time to expand onto a different channel
If your target audience isn’t active on a platform like LinkedIn, they're almost definitely hanging out somewhere like Reddit, Meta, or YouTube.
What I like about YouTube is the same thing I like about CTV ads: you can get some non-skippable inventory, so it's much more likely to build brand recall with that ad type.
Cheat code: Use the same ICP audience everywhere
When you put spend into traditionally B2C channels, the number one thing to get right is the targeting.
Native B2C targeting doesn't work that well for B2B because the algorithm’s audience tools are not as sophisticated as they are on LinkedIn and Google.
I recommend using a tool like Primer or Vector to push the same ICP audience you use on other platforms so spend isn’t put towards low-quality inventory that has no chance of converting to pipeline.
Want to expand into B2C channels?
Check out this masterclass I ran with Keith Putnam-Delaney from Primer about how Demand Gen B2Bs can reach and convert their ICP on B2C channels like Meta and Reddit.
What To Do If Your Paid Program Isn’t Working After 90 Days
Let's say you get to 90 days of launching this strategy and it just doesn't feel like it's working.
It’s either one of three things:
Targeting. This is the main issue if you can’t hit audience penetration and frequency targets. Often we go into accounts and see 5% audience penetration and 2 frequency—that's a huge problem. It might also be that you’ve selected the wrong audience. If that's the case, go into the CRM and actually look at who's actually reaching out to you. Are we actually targeting people who look like those people? If not, that's how to fix it
Messaging. If this is off, you'll have low dwell times and low engagement rates. What kind of "low" depends on the industry and the business type, but for the most part, if engagement rate is less than 1% and dwell times are less than 5 seconds, I would say something's off and you need to experiment with some new creative and messaging
Tracking. Your campaigns might actually be working, but you can’t prove it because the data isn’t connected to the platform. The ad platform will usually tell you if there's a problem in the setup. If not (and you don't have the skills in-house to figure that out), get a specialist to take a look under the hood. It’s super important to have bulletproof tracking data to help you make decisions
One note I do want to make here to round this newsletter out.
A lot of marketers love to say marketing takes time.
And that’s true—some marketing takes time, but it’s also an excuse to hide underperforming campaigns.
The reality is you absolutely should see pipeline movement within 90 days if you have the right strategy, ad types, and targeting in place.
Like I said last week, get your house in order first. Then, execute like hell.
Hope you've found this useful and I’ll catch ya in the next one! 🤘
Patrick
P.S. If you are a SaaS marketer spending more than $20K/month on LinkedIn or Google and your CAC is trending up while lead quality trends down, hit me up. I'd love to audit your account, show you exactly where the waste is, and share some tips on how to run an account that brings in revenue… just send me a DM to chat!
Want to talk about how to get more customers with paid ads in 2026?
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