LinkedIn is sharpening its focus on authentic engagement, video content and AI-driven personalisation, while tightening its defences against spam and manipulative posting tactics. The professional network’s strategy is paying off. User interaction continues to rise, video creation is booming, and its ad business is expanding faster than many of its mid-tier social rivals.

For marketers, this evolution reinforces LinkedIn’s position as the essential platform for professional storytelling, brand visibility and trusted audience engagement.

Engagement Rocketing

LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky reported a 24% increase in comments this year, showing that more professionals are participating in meaningful discussions rather than scrolling passively. The company attributes this growth to refinements in its feed algorithm, which prioritises relevance, professional value and credible expertise.

Video is driving much of this engagement. LinkedIn has logged three consecutive quarters of double-digit growth in video uploads, with watch time up 36% year-on-year. Short-form video is growing twice as fast as other post types and is shared 20 times more frequently than other formats.

A Financial Times analysis earlier this year found that CEO posting activity on LinkedIn has more than doubled in the past 18 months. Executives are increasingly using the platform to showcase leadership, connect with stakeholders and build personal credibility. For many, LinkedIn video has become a more strategic and controlled alternative to TikTok or Instagram, allowing leaders to reach business audiences while maintaining their professional tone.

For marketers, this shift opens new creative opportunities. Video lets brands and executives speak directly to audiences, humanising corporate communications while maintaining authority.

Financially, LinkedIn remains solid. Microsoft reported a 10% revenue increase, largely driven by Marketing Solutions, while its Talent Solutions business continues to face pressure from a weaker hiring market. Yet the real growth story is happening within LinkedIn’s advertising arm.

LinkedIn’s Ad Business Outpaces Rivals

According to new data from WARC Media, ad investment in LinkedIn is rising sharply. WARC forecasts that LinkedIn’s ad revenue will reach 8.2 billion US dollars in 2025, up 18% year-on-year, climbing to 9.6 billion in 2026 and 11.3 billion by 2027.

This expansion places LinkedIn ahead of other mid-size platforms such as Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit. Analysts attribute the growth to an influx of spend from generative AI companies, the rise of B2B creators and the platform’s growing experimentation with connected TV campaigns.

Generative AI brands are proving a major growth engine. According to Sensor Tower data cited by WARC, GenAI companies now allocate around 12% of their digital ad budgets to LinkedIn, compared with just 3% across most other sectors.

LinkedIn’s ads reach about 350 million active users each month, according to We Are Social, with particularly high engagement among full-time professionals. In Kantar’s Media Reactions survey, LinkedIn ads ranked highly for trust, relevance and credibility, especially in the US, where the platform’s professional audience is most concentrated.

Short-form video ads continue to grow, up 12% year-on-year, with emotionally resonant content achieving the best completion rates. The result is a platform where performance metrics are increasingly shaped by quality storytelling rather than click volume.

Beyond B2B

While LinkedIn remains synonymous with B2B marketing, it is evolving into something broader. The platform has become a key destination for public affairs, stakeholder relations and high-value B2C engagement, particularly in categories where trust, authority and professional credibility are critical.

Government departments, universities, energy providers, investment firms and luxury brands are all using LinkedIn to reach affluent, decision-making audiences in ways traditional social networks cannot match. For high-ticket consumer sectors such as property, education, financial services and travel, LinkedIn offers both precision targeting and contextual credibility.

This expanding use case positions LinkedIn as a hybrid environment, part business network, part thought leadership forum and part premium advertising channel. For communications teams and CMOs, it now sits at the crossroads of corporate reputation, influence and conversion.

The Professional Dataset Advantage

LinkedIn’s competitive edge remains its unrivalled professional dataset. With over 1.3 billion members, the platform provides an unparalleled source of structured data on employment, industry and skills.

As LinkedIn embeds AI deeper into its products, that dataset is becoming increasingly powerful. The ability to analyse workforce trends, predict skills demand and map professional relationships gives LinkedIn a predictive intelligence that few platforms can replicate. This, in turn, makes its ad targeting and recommendation systems more relevant and precise.

Roslansky has suggested that LinkedIn’s AI capabilities could one day forecast job market shifts, identify training needs or recommend career transitions. To achieve that, the company must ensure its data remains clean and authentic, which is why it is taking tougher measures against fake activity.

Tackling Fake Engagement And Bot Activity

LinkedIn has strengthened its systems to detect and suppress inauthentic engagement. Engagement pods, automation tools and artificially inflated comments are now major targets.

Oscar Rodriguez, LinkedIn’s VP of Product, has outlined the company’s approach. “Our goal is to make engagement pods ineffective,” he explained, noting that LinkedIn is improving its detection models to flag suspicious activity, limit reach and block manipulative third-party tools.

Between July and December 2024, LinkedIn blocked more than 80 million fake accounts at registration, using AI-driven verification tools that prevent most fake profiles from ever appearing in the feed.

The Battle With Spam

Despite these improvements, spam remains a challenge. The fight is a constant cat and mouse game between LinkedIn and spammers who adapt as detection tools evolve.

A recent example is the wave of “comment to get” posts asking users to type “yes” or “xxx” to receive a free report or guide. These posts artificially inflate engagement figures without contributing any real value to discussion, cluttering feeds and diminishing user experience. LinkedIn says it is working to limit the reach of such posts and penalise accounts that rely on them.

While some of this content still slips through, the overall trajectory is improving. As LinkedIn invests in smarter moderation and spam detection, users should see a cleaner, more relevant feed over time.

What It Means For Marketers

For marketers, communications professionals and public affairs teams, LinkedIn’s evolution signals several clear trends.

1. Substance over scale. Content that delivers professional insight, credible expertise or genuine thought leadership will increasingly outperform engagement bait.

2. Video as a core format. With rising CEO participation and expanding ad budgets for short-form content, video is now central to LinkedIn strategy.

3. AI-powered precision. As LinkedIn’s dataset becomes cleaner and smarter, targeting will become more efficient, supporting both brand building and lead generation.

4. Beyond B2B. Public sector, policy and high-value consumer brands should consider LinkedIn a vital environment for influence and reputation, not just sales.

LinkedIn is no longer just the world’s professional network. It is becoming the most trusted social space for serious conversations, where brand credibility, leadership and authenticity matter most.