Smokeball ran the same video on LinkedIn twice, once from the company and once from the two people in it. The version from the people won on every measure reported.
Smokeball, the Australian legal practice management software company, had a three-minute customer testimonial. It cut it into 30-second clips and ran them on LinkedIn two ways at once. One set went out as standard company ads. The other was posted by the two people in the video, George and Abi, and promoted from their own profiles as Thought Leader Ads to the same Matched Audiences.
Same video, same audience. The only change was whose name sat on top of the post.
[[fig:1]]
The versions posted by George and Abi earned twice the view rate and 8.7 times the completion rate, at half the cost per view, and return on ad spend rose 186% (LinkedIn case study, undated). Snowflake saw the same pattern at a different scale: a Thought Leader Ad from its principal developer advocate, Dash Desai, promoting Dev Day 2024 reached a 21.2% click-through rate (LinkedIn case study, 2024).
A company advert announces itself before anyone reads it. A post from a named person carries their face, their title and their history of posts, and it reads as something they chose to say. On a feed built around people, that is the format the reader is already scrolling for.
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Both results come from LinkedIn's own case studies, so this is the platform reporting on its own product, and the Smokeball one carries no date. Neither gives a pipeline or revenue figure. View and completion rates measure attention, not sales, so the test I would run judges the play on meetings booked with the target list.
[[fig:2]]
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The founder has to keep posting for this to work, which is why it pairs with the second play below.
Sources: LinkedIn, Smokeball customer advocacy case study (undated). LinkedIn, Snowflake case study (2024). Checked 1 November 2026.