B2B brands need to better understand how companies are engaging with ads, not just individuals within the brands. That's why LinkedIn just announced the new Company Intelligence API. But that's just one of a number of new capabilities to help brands market better on the platform.
Attribution remains a sticking point
Brands are spending more of their advertising on budget on LinkedIn, increasing from 31% at the start of 2024 to 39% by the end, according to Dreamdata's LinkedIn Ads B2B Benchmarks 2025.
LinkedIn Ads also perform much better across all stages of the funnel marketing quality leads (MQLs), sales qualified leads (SQLs), and new business than Google and Meta. According to Dreamdata:
LinkedIn Ads has a big influence on customer journeys. 29% of all MQLs, 36% of all SQLs, and 35% of all New Biz deals are influenced by LinkedIn Ads. By comparison, Google Ads, the second- best performer, influences 19% of MQLs, 21% of SQLs, and 25% of New Biz deals.
But here's the kicker: the Dreamdata report states that the typical B2B buying journey has 76 touches, takes place through 3.7 channels, and includes 6.8 stakeholders. There's obviously a lot going on in the buyer journey and attribution continues to be a hot topic, including what's happening on LinkedIn.
B2B marketers need to show the impact of campaigns across the entire buyer journey but attribution is challenging. Think about all the touches on LinkedIn alone by different company employees. 86% of B2B marketers say marketing measurement is a growing priority, but only 28% say attribution strategies are "very successful."
LinkedIn claims its new Company Intelligence API will help. The Company Intelligence API is simple. It provides aggregate engagement data for paid and organic impressions and clicks giving brands a more accurate view across the entire funnel.
This API is only available through LinkedIn's integration partners, including Channel 99, Dreamdata, and Factors.ai. These tools ingest the data and combine it with customer relationship management (CRM) data, and other data and surface the LinkedIn company engagement data within their reports and dashboards.
Brands gain a better understanding of how companies are engaging throughout the buyer journey (not just individual leads), and sales teams can identify highly engaged companies, prioritizing outreach.
LinkedIn said that beta customers saw strong results using the API, including:
* 287% increase in companies reached
* 75% increase in MQLs
* 96% increase in SQLs
* 43% reduction in costs per acquisition.
And new buyer groups will improve advertising ROI
Another LinkedIn study that included over 1,000 B2B marketers in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and India found that understanding buyer intent will be the biggest challenge in proving campaign effectiveness. Part of the challenge lies in knowing who is in the buying group and how they are engaging.
In the study, 46% of marketers are shifting to a buyer group marketing strategy, which is probably why LinkedIn also introduced Buyer Groups in their ad platform.
Buyer Groups is an AI-powered targeting solution. It uses the LinkedIn AI to analyze buyer signals and identify more of the decision-makers and key stakeholders in a company.
With Buyer Groups, you create a campaign and add a source URL, which is then matched to a LinkedIn category. LinkedIn's AI then analyzes buyer signals, job titles, professional connections, product interests, and company attributes against the selected category to create the buying group. It's not a static group; LinkedIn continuously refreshes the group based on all these signals.
Is it perfect? It's not a known list of people in a buying group, but getting that list is nearly impossible anyway. LinkedIn talks about "hidden buyers" that are part of the group but aren't out there downloading whitepapers and doing research:
These are the 'Hidden Buyers,' the process experts from departments like procurement, finance, legal, and operations, who evaluate vendors on criteria that are not about product performance at all, but are about risk mitigation and whether a vendor can be trusted. Hidden Buyers don't leave the same digital footprints as Target Buyers because their role in the decision-making process does not require them to be product experts.
In Death of the Funnel, Colin Fleming, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer at ServiceNow, agrees with the study, saying:
Buying groups ballooned to 22 people, each moving at their own speed, with their own agenda. Research started long before we saw a signal. And by the time the shortlist landed, it was already too late. Belief was being built off the grid -- in rooms we weren't in, in DMs we couldn't see.
The writing was on the wall. LinkedIn data shows these Hidden Buyers -- the ones we never see -- hold nearly equal influence in the deal, and they're 70% more likely to reject brands they don't recognize. In 81% of winning deals, everyone or almost everyone on the team already knew the brand.
Familiarity isn't a bonus. It's the entry fee.
Looking to AI to help find the right people is a good step. Although intent is critical, so is brand awareness and AI should be able to help brands serve content that is relevant to each person in the buying group based on their role. I'm not sure LinkedIn can provide different ad and thought leadership content to different people in the buying group yet, but it makes sense to be the next step.
My take
B2B buying is complex. There are a lot of people involved in the buying process, some more involved than others, but each having an impact on the final decision. When marketers build campaigns, they want to know they are targeting the right people and advertising is a key part of any campaign.
These new capabilities from LinkedIn (among others) that look at company engagement and help identify buying group members are essential to finding the right people to advertise to and reaching them at the right place in their journey with the right information and offers.
