LinkedIn just rolled out a promising update that B2B advertisers should have on their radar: First Impression Ads. The timing makes sense, considering LinkedIn’s latest research found that 91% of B2B marketers say grabbing audience attention is their biggest challenge.
This new video-only placement is designed to help address this pain point; note that LinkedIn is also planning to roll out Reserved Ads, which allows marketers to book image ads and other Sponsored Content as the first ad in the feed.
Let’s break down how the ads work and, more importantly, how we’re thinking about testing them for clients.
First Impression Ads allow brands to be the very first ad a user sees when they open LinkedIn. Essentially, you're showing up on that premium “first scroll” real estate for your brand before your audience gets into their feed.
For marketers looking to boost top-of-funnel awareness or make a strong initial brand impression, this could become a valuable lever, especially when combined with the rest of LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content formats like Thought Leader Ads, Single Image Ads, and Document Ads (which can now also be reserved for First Impression placements via Reserved Ads).
These placements are all about awareness and initial attention, so the targeting strategy should reflect that. Instead of narrowing your audience too much, we’d recommend keeping targeting broad but relevant, ideal for top-of-funnel campaigns aimed at expanding reach and introducing your brand to net-new audiences.
This keeps you focused on relevant buyers, but with enough scale to let LinkedIn’s algorithm work and capture early-stage attention from the right people.
While tools like CAPI are powerful for optimizing lower-funnel campaigns, we wouldn’t lead with them for First Impression Ads.
Because these ads are designed for top-of-funnel awareness, using highly qualified audiences built on conversion data (like SQLs or closed-won customers) risks shrinking your pool too much. The goal here is to introduce your brand to new, high-potential audiences, not necessarily to retarget users already in your funnel.
That said, if you’re testing multiple audience segments, you could still experiment with warmer audiences for product launches or major announcements where you want known prospects to see the message early.
In short, yes, but with a few caveats.
Thanks to LinkedIn’s improved Revenue Attribution Reporting, we’re getting better visibility into how early-stage impressions contribute to revenue down the line. But to unlock that view, you’ll need proper tracking in place, specifically:
If you have those pieces in place, you’ll be able to start seeing view-through revenue attribution for First Impression Ads, giving you better insight into how your upper-funnel brand-building efforts contribute to pipeline over time.
Where First Impression Ads have the most potential is when they’re paired with a solid retargeting strategy.
Think of these ads as your attention-grabbers. Once someone sees your First Impression Ad, you should immediately have middle and bottom-of-funnel follow-ups ready to:
Because First Impression Ads ensure that you’ve put your brand in front of someone’s eyeballs, retargeting those same users afterward is an efficient way to build familiarity and trust, ultimately making your down-funnel conversion efforts more efficient.
LinkedIn’s First Impression Ads feel like a natural next step in the platform’s ongoing push to improve B2B brand-building tools. For most companies, they won’t be your biggest direct response driver, but they could become a valuable lever in full-funnel strategies, especially if you have a retargeting system in place to capitalize on the awareness you’re generating.
As always, we’ll be watching the early results closely as we start running tests.