Adweek’s Kendra Barnett wrote an interesting article recently about TTD competitors and LinkedIn Ads. In short, competitors are trying to capitalize on the tension between TTD, Publicis, and Omnicom by running conquesting ads on LinkedIn in various forms.
On the heels of that, we looked at what TTD’s LinkedIn ads in the U.S. have looked like this year. Here’s what we found.
| Category | Number of Ads |
| Premium | 25 |
| Open internet | 21 |
| AI | 18 |
| Performance | 18 |
| CTV | 17 |
| Measurement | 16 |
| Outcomes | 14 |
| Audio | 14 |
| Supply | 13 |
| Retail | 11 |
| Optimization | 8 |
| First-party data | 8 |
| Kokai | 8 |
| Control | 7 |
| Efficient | 5 |
| UID2 | 3 |
| Opensincera | 3 |
| Waste | 3 |
| OpenPath | 3 |
| DSP | 2 |
| SPO | 2 |
| OpenAds | 2 |
| Identity | 1 |
| Ventura | 0 |
| Solimar | 0 |
| Koa | 0 |
And here’s a cooler visualization because we have AI and can make this easily now:
Why This Matters:
How a company markets itself obviously says a lot about its priorities. We identified 159 live ads, according to LinkedIn, as of April 7. Broken out, this is what those ads focused on the most. (The categories are not mutually exclusive, meaning an ad can touch on AI and waste, for example.)
Clear themes emerge: “premium,” “open internet” (no surprise), AI (somewhat surprising), and others. Our search was fairly exhaustive. We used LinkedIn’s public Ads Library and reviewed results across 40+ search terms. (If you think we missed something, we probably looked.)
There are also some notable absences in the data like no Ventura (or is that not surprising?).
Experts React:
What’s your take on the data? If you post on X about the results, we’ll add to this story.
Our Take:
It seems like LinkedIn campaigns have helped plug a few gaps for TTD on the paid side (AI, outcomes, etc.).
By the way, why aren’t more adtech companies investing in LinkedIn Ads? Many of your competitors are already leaning in! (Our dad doesn’t work at LinkedIn, we swear.)
Separately, it’s worth noting that TTD likely ran more than 159 ads this year. This reflects currently live ads, not those that have lapsed or been removed. There’s also some quirkiness in how LinkedIn’s Ads Library surfaces results, so consider this directional, not definitive.
