What Smartly announced
On September 22, 2026, Smartly said it had brought LinkedIn Ads into its unified advertising platform. The Helsinki-based ad tech company framed the move around three capabilities: creative personalization for B2B audiences, AI-powered video production, and a “continuous intelligence loop” that feeds campaign results into the next round of decisions.
Laura Desmond, Smartly’s chief executive, argued that one message is not enough when a buying group includes finance, IT and the C-suite. “When you’re engaging a complex buying group, one message or one piece of creative isn’t enough,” she said.
Why B2B teams should care
LinkedIn is not a minor channel in B2B. Dreamdata’s 2026 benchmarks put LinkedIn at 121% ROAS and 41% of B2B advertising budgets. The average buying journey now stretches to 272 days and 10 stakeholders, according to figures cited from LinkedIn research.
That makes creative versioning a real operational problem. Smartly’s own EMARKETER research found that 72% of marketers reuse or only slightly modify assets across platforms, while just 25% tailor creative for both social and connected TV. The pitch: turn existing brand video into LinkedIn-ready assets faster.
- Creative intelligence: audience insights from LinkedIn plus Smartly data to shape ads by buying stage.
- Video scaling: AI-powered production to turn existing assets into LinkedIn-ready video.
- Performance loop: results routed into a continuous intelligence feedback system.
What the release doesn’t say
There is no LinkedIn executive quoted, no launch date, no pricing and no list of supported markets or ad formats. Smartly also did not name which of its recent tools—AI Studio, Creative Insights, Creative Predictive Potential or Synapse—actually work on LinkedIn inventory.
The data flow is the biggest open question. The release mentions “audience insights from LinkedIn’s professional network” but does not explain what Smartly receives beyond standard Campaign Manager reporting or how conversions are attributed.
Measurement matters here. Smartly says it manages over $7 billion in ad spend across more than 800 brands, up from $6 billion in November 2025. But its blended 5.5x ROAS claim is not specific to LinkedIn and cannot be compared directly to Dreamdata’s channel-level benchmark.
The crowded route into Campaign Manager
Smartly is not walking into empty space. LinkedIn itself added five AI creative tools inside Campaign Manager in July 2026, claiming that campaigns with five or more ad variants see click-through rates more than 20% higher. Adobe’s GenStudio already exports image and video ads into Campaign Manager, and Innovid activates LinkedIn connected TV.
Smartly’s counterargument is breadth: one system for creative, media buying and performance data across Meta, TikTok, Amazon, Roku and now LinkedIn. That consolidation has logic for teams already using Smartly. For LinkedIn-only buyers, the native tools are a credible alternative.
What to check before you switch
If you are evaluating this, treat the announcement as a starting point, not a done deal.
- Ask which LinkedIn ad formats and markets are live in Smartly.
- Ask how attribution works for 272-day B2B journeys.
- Ask how AI-generated or AI-versioned video will be labeled, especially in the EU under Article 50 of the AI Act.
The integration is the first in Smartly’s recent run that rests entirely on B2B buying, so the burden is on Smartly to prove it can improve channel-specific performance, not just save production time.
Source: PPC Land
