Why Personalisation Isn't Relevancy | LinkedIn |

LinkedIn has expanded personalisation in sponsored content, allowing advertisers to dynamically insert information such as a user’s first name, job title, company or industry into single image and video ads. The appeal is obvious. Personalisation attracts attention, and attention is increasingly hard to earn.

But there is an important distinction for B2B marketers:

Knowing someone’s name isn’t the same as knowing what matters to them.

Personalisation Is Easy. Relevance Is Harder.

B2B marketers have seen this all before.

“Hi Sarah, as Marketing Director at Acme Ltd, we thought you’d be interested in…”

Technically, that’s personalised. But all it really demonstrates is access to profile data.

LinkedIn’s expanded functionality brings the same opportunity to more of its ad formats. Used lazily, it risks bringing one of the least appealing conventions of automated email into the LinkedIn feed. The difference comes down to what your ad actually demonstrates.

A useful hierarchy:

Personalisation shows you know who someone is.
Relevance shows you understand what matters to them.
Insight shows you understand something useful about their situation.

The further down the list your ads get, the more reason someone has to pay attention.

So, When Should You Use It?

LinkedIn recommends using personalisation selectively and testing its impact. We agree, but some applications look considerably more useful than others.

Cold audience + first name: avoid.
Using someone’s name without an existing relationship adds little relevance and risks making the ad feel automated or intrusive. Save first-name personalisation for audiences that already have some relationship with the brand.

Top-of-funnel video: worth testing.
Personalisation could provide an effective pattern interrupt in the opening seconds. The test is whether that attention translates into meaningful engagement.

Role or industry + genuinely relevant message: useful.
Personalisation can strengthen creative already built around a real understanding of that audience and the issues that matter to them.

Strategic ABM + company name: strong opportunity.
Company personalisation becomes interesting when the idea itself is genuinely account-relevant.

Remarketing and engaged audiences: strong opportunity.
Previous engagement creates context for a more direct approach. As the relationship develops, personalisation is less likely to feel unexpected.

Generic creative + a macro: avoid.
Adding profile information to an undifferentiated ad won’t make the proposition more relevant.

A useful rule of thumb: the stronger the existing relationship, the more permission you have to personalise.

Test It Properly

Ideally, personalised creative should be tested against both a non-personalised version and a more audience-relevant alternative.

For example:

A: Improve your B2B marketing ROI.

B: Sarah, improve your B2B marketing ROI.

C: Three ways Marketing Directors can defend their 2027 budget.

Version B tests personalisation. Version C tests relevance. That’s a much more useful comparison.

But many niche B2B advertisers don’t have the audience size or media budget for a meaningful A/B test. Splitting a small campaign can simply produce two sets of inconclusive data.

In those cases, benchmark performance against the most comparable previous campaigns available, considering audience, format, objective, investment and proposition. Look beyond click-through rate to engagement and eventual conversion.

It isn’t as rigorous as a controlled experiment, but it’s more useful than forcing an A/B test your campaign can’t support.

Think Beyond the Ad

Personalisation creates an expectation.

Imagine seeing:

Sarah, see how Acme could improve its demand generation.

You click and arrive on: Welcome to our Demand Generation Services.

The experience has gone from apparently personal to obviously generic in one click.

That doesn’t mean building a unique landing page for every prospect. The post-click experience simply needs to reflect the level of relevance promised by the advertising.

For an industry campaign, that might mean an industry-specific landing page. Role-based creative could lead to messaging and proof points tailored to that audience. For high-value ABM, there may be a case for account-specific content or experiences.

The more personalised the promise, the more relevant the experience that follows needs to be.

Personalisation should improve the journey, not end at the creative.

Personalisation Should Earn Its Place

LinkedIn’s new functionality gives B2B advertisers another creative tool, with some particularly interesting applications for video, ABM and remarketing.

But novelty won’t compensate for an irrelevant proposition or a disjointed buyer journey.

Before adding a personalisation macro to your next LinkedIn campaign, ask yourself three questions:

Does it make the advertising more relevant?
Can we meaningfully measure whether it works?
Does the experience after the click live up to the promise?

If the answer to all three is yes, experiment.

Putting your prospect’s name in an ad is easy. Making their whole experience relevant is still the hard part.

Need help?

If you want a second opinion on where personalisation fits in your next LinkedIn campaign, why not book a free 30-minute consultation with one of our B2B digital marketing experts.