LinkedIn Advertising · March 2026 · 20 min read
Every LinkedIn Ad Format Ranked for 2026 [Honest Tier List]
Not for big SaaS with £100k budgets. Not for "brand awareness for the sake of it." Just what actually works when you've got £500–£5,000 a month and you need pipeline.
New to LinkedIn Ads? This article assumes you've got Campaign Manager set up. Start with our beginner tutorial first →
Earlier this week I spoke to a marketing manager at a small accountancy company. Good ideas, decent budget, genuinely knew what campaigns they wanted to run. But one question kept coming up: "James, which ad format should we actually be using?"
It's the most common question I get. And the problem is LinkedIn doesn't always recommend what's best for you. It recommends what's best for them — and for you donating your budget to their bank account.
So I filmed this video ranking every major format. Image ads, video, carousels, thought leader ads, document ads, message ads, conversation ads, lead gen forms, and text ads. For each one: what it literally is, what it does well, where people waste money, and when to use it.
All from the lens of small, niche, "boring" B2B businesses without endless budget who want more leads. Not huge brand awareness plays. Not what applies to companies spending £100k a month. What works when you've got £500 to £5,000 and you need pipeline.
⚡ 2-Minute Quick Summary
Best for beginners: Single image ads. Most versatile, cheapest to produce, and the algorithm favours them. A selfie of the founder outperforms most stock photos.
Best if you're confident on camera: Video ads. Selfie-style, shot on an iPhone, vertical format. Outperforms images when done properly — but too many people over-produce them.
Best for authority building: Thought Leader Ads. Boost organic posts from personal profiles. The halo effect of engineering someone's expert status is enormous.
Best for warm outreach: Message Ads. Short, personal DMs to a targeted company list from your CRM. High open rates, no spam folders.
Overrated: Conversation Ads and Document Ads. They look cool to set up but the lead quality rarely justifies the effort.
Avoid: Text Ads. Tiny sidebar ads on desktop only. Cheap impressions that do nothing.
The honest truth: it's not about the format. It's about how strong your hook and offer are. A great image ad will beat a shit video ad every single time.
⏱ Jump to a section:
The Tier System
I'm ranking these from the lens of small, niche B2B businesses without endless budget who want to concentrate on getting more leads. Not brand awareness for the sake of it. Not what works for Fortune 500 companies.
Image Ads
A TIERThe most straightforward, most basic format — and what the majority of advertisers spend their money on. Just a normal image ad in the LinkedIn feed.
And here's what annoys me. When I say "quick to produce," I mean some of the best performing ad campaigns we've ever run are literally selfies. The founder on a building site. The sales director in the car park before a client meeting. A screenshot of a WhatsApp message from a happy customer. The image is just a vehicle for the hook. Stop overthinking it.
🚫 Where people waste money:
- • The stock photo of a handshake in an office. Because "that's B2B." Stop it. It doesn't stand out and it doesn't grab attention.
- • Creating a poster/leaflet with loads of headlines, their website URL, Instagram handle, Facebook page, TikTok account, phone number, email — way too busy. The algorithm doesn't like that much text and as a person you can't fucking read it on a feed.
- • Getting a designer to basically create a digital brochure. Here's our visions, here's our values, here's our history. Nobody cares.
✅ What to do instead:
Simple, raw, authentic image with a hook that makes your exact target audience stop scrolling. Best for beginners. Most versatile. The algorithm favours them. Still the backbone of the majority of B2B ad campaigns and the easiest format to create, improve, and iterate on.
Go deeper: Ad creative
Two frameworks and two drills for creating scroll-stopping B2B ads — even in "boring" industries.
Carousel Ads
C TIERThe slideshows you flick through on LinkedIn. They can communicate more across multiple slides — break down a problem, show steps, compare before and afters. They replicate the format people are used to seeing on Instagram.
But for beginners, it's way too tempting to over-explain and spend ages designing a beautifully crafted carousel that doesn't actually perform as well as a standalone image ad.
The whole performance relies heavily on how attention-grabbing the first slide is. And you'll often pay more to reach the same audience compared to single images.
When to use them:
If you're already good at creating organic carousels — raw, authentic, not overly produced — it makes sense to put spend behind them. But they're very average when done badly.
Text Ads
AVOIDA tiny ad on the right-hand sidebar of desktop LinkedIn. A company logo and a small headline. Desktop only. No mobile.
Some people bang on about these because you get cheap impressions. But cheap impressions that do fuck all aren't cost-effective.
You can't communicate enough with a logo and one line of copy to generate leads for a small B2B business. It's a tiny display ad in the corner. Avoid.
The only exception:
If you're already spending tens to hundreds of thousands per month across multiple channels and everything else is working really well — text ads can be a cheap cherry on top for the halo effect. But that's not you if you're reading this.
Conversation Ads & Message Ads
Conversation Ads
OVERRATEDThese appear in your inbox as a pre-built decision tree — like a chatbot where the user clicks buttons through a planned interactive conversation. Feels interactive but doesn't feel as human or personal as an actual message.
They look cool to set up. But most of the bad rep around LinkedIn inbox ads exists because they're written how nobody would ever talk to another human, trying to sell everything in one go.
💡 Better alternative:
If you want that interactive diagnostic quiz experience, build a quiz or calculator on your website instead. You host it, you own it, and it's not crammed into a LinkedIn inbox.
Message Ads
B TIERA sponsored message straight into LinkedIn DMs. The recipient can reply naturally or click through to your landing page. Much more human than a chatbot decision tree.
The best use case: upload a company list direct from your CRM. Lapsed leads. People you've had conversations with before. People you've never been able to get hold of by conventional sales methods. Filter that down by job title and send them a short, sweet DM asking an open question.
Some people will ignore you. Some will reply like absolute dickheads about how dare you message them — the irony being those are normally the companies with huge sales teams hammering out cold calls and cold emails themselves. But it's a numbers game and some people will go "yeah actually, I did see your email, we do need to sort this out."
Compared to cold email, LinkedIn message ads actually land in the inbox — no spam folders to deal with. The open rates and reply rates are genuinely high, even though some of you watching this might struggle to believe that.
The key: short, sharp, sweet, direct. Not trying to communicate everything. Not overly corporate. Written like an actual human sent it.
Go deeper: Target account lists
Message Ads work best when you upload a specific company list. Here's how to build one with high match rates.
Document Ads
OVERRATEDUpload a PDF that shows in the feed like a carousel. After a set number of pages (2, 3, 5 — your choice), it prompts the reader to fill out a form to access the rest. A gated lead magnet, essentially.
Here's the honest truth: the people who want to download PDFs and get freebies are not the same people who want to book a call and work with you.
You can build up a huge database of people who downloaded your free report. But then you get annoyed that the conversion rate off the back of it is terrible. Of course it is — they asked for a free PDF, not a demo.
The other problem:
A lot of senior decision makers — the exact people you're trying to reach — simply would not be arsed downloading a PDF. Don't waste your time if you're selling to C-suite.
When it can work:
Huge benchmark reports for specific industries (e.g., an IT company targeting CTOs with a state-of-the-industry report). But even then, it rarely translates to calls and clients the way other formats do. Style over substance.
Video Ads
B TIERYou can communicate so much more in a video. Personality, character, the vibe of who people will actually work with. This makes follow-up sales calls dramatically easier because they feel like they already know you.
A simple selfie sales pitch shot on an iPhone. Vertical format. Unpolished. No flashy cuts. Speaking like a normal human to a normal person.
🚫 What doesn't work:
- • A polished £10k production company interview with the CEO
- • A "video brochure" that lists your visions, values, and office b-roll
- • A wanky trailer that's focused on you rather than the customer's problems
Video is shown slightly less than images on timelines, and some people simply won't do it. But when done properly — a good structure, a strong hook in the first 2 seconds, text overlays that replicate what people see on TikTok and Instagram — it will normally outperform an image ad.
📹 Go deeper: Script your video ad
Use our 4-step blueprint to structure your video ads properly — or let the AI tool generate a script guide for you.
Thought Leader Ads
B TIERTake someone's organic LinkedIn post and put ad spend behind it. Instead of their post being seen by ex-colleagues and recruiters, it appears in front of your exact target audience. And most people don't even realise it's an ad.
The halo effect is enormous. You're essentially engineering someone's status as a recognised expert — a minor celebrity — to your customer base.
Great use cases:
- • Events & conferences: "Who's going to [event]?" posts → target attendees → people come up saying "I saw you on LinkedIn"
- • Sales team promotions: Account managers sharing upcoming offers to current customers
- • Founder content: Getting the founder recognised by the exact people who buy from the business
- • Post-event content: "5 things we learned at Expo" selfies and takeaways
⚠️ Current drawbacks:
- • No native CTA button on the ad — harder to direct to a landing page
- • Organic content needs to be decent in the first place
- • Some posts get rejected for ad policy compliance (annoying)
- • Must be a native post — can't boost shares
Workaround: put a link or "DM me for..." in the post copy. Yes, it might reduce organic reach by 5-10% but that's massively outweighed by making it easy for paid audiences to take action.
Go deeper: Thought Leader Ads
Our complete guide to setting up and optimising Thought Leader Ads for B2B.
Thought Leader Ads GuideLead Gen Forms
C TIERInstead of clicking through to your website, the user fills out a form directly on LinkedIn. Profile data auto-populates — name, email, company, job title — making it very low-friction.
The catch: higher volume, lower quality. Consistently. Both on LinkedIn and Meta.
There's a lot less intent from someone who tapped a pre-filled form than from someone who visited your website once, twice, checked out your case studies, and then filled in a contact form. The show-up rate to calls is noticeably lower. Even when they do show up, they're often not the same calibre of considered buyer.
People also use lead gen forms for lead magnets — PDFs, freebies, guides. Same warning as Document Ads: someone who wanted your free checklist is not the same person who wants to spend £20k working with you. Don't treat them like they are.
Use in these situations:
- • Your website is genuinely terrible, non-existent, or doesn't convert at all
- • You have a strong retargeting audience who've visited your site multiple times and this is a low-friction way to nudge them to convert
Not sure which format is right for your business?
Book a call and we'll tell you exactly which ad formats to use for your industry, audience, and budget.
LinkedIn Ad Format Comparison Table
Quick reference based on 2026 UK data for small B2B businesses spending £500–£5,000/month.
| Format | Tier | Best For | Complexity | Beginner? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image Ads | A | Everything — retargeting, cold, warm | Low | |
| Video Ads | B | Cold audiences, trust-building | Medium | |
| Thought Leader Ads | B | Authority, events, personal brand | Low | |
| Message Ads | B | CRM lists, lapsed leads, warm outreach | Low | |
| Carousel Ads | C | Multi-step stories, case studies | Medium | |
| Lead Gen Forms | C | No website / retargeting conversion | Low | |
| Conversation Ads | D | Pre-qualification (build a quiz instead) | High | |
| Document Ads | D | Industry reports (rarely converts) | Medium | |
| Text Ads | F | Desktop sidebar only — avoid | Low |
Rankings based on lead generation performance for UK B2B businesses with £500–£5,000/month budgets. Results vary by industry and targeting.
The Final Ranking
Here's the Ultra Honest Bit
It's not really about the exact ad format you pick.
It's about how strong your advertising hook is. How strong your offer is. How much you can persuade someone into actually working with your business.
Do not create boring ads whatever format you use. Do not create shit ads whatever format you use.
For most B2B businesses spending £500-£5,000 a month:
- Start simple. Image ads.
- If you're confident on camera, do video. Awesome.
- Thought Leader Ads to start building organic presence and engineering authority.
- Have a clear company list filtered by job titles.
- Set up retargeting for people who visited your website recently.
Get those fundamentals right and you'll do well whatever budget you're working with.
🔧 Don't have tracking set up yet?
You can't retarget website visitors if you haven't installed the LinkedIn Insight Tag. Here's the step-by-step guide.
Tracking Pixel Setup GuideWant scroll-stopping ad concepts for your 'boring' B2B business?
Book a call and we'll create 3 tailored ad concepts for your exact industry and target audience. At the very least, you'll walk away with ideas that aren't boring.
Picking the right formats is half of it. The other half is the targeting and testing behind them, which is the bit I do as a LinkedIn Ads agency for UK B2B companies.