Have you ever wondered why B2B advertising is so difficult to make effective? While B2C advertising can reach millions of users with just one compelling piece of content, B2B advertising demands millimetric precision — the right person, the right message, at the right time. In a world where B2B buying decisions are increasingly complex, creating tailored content for each audience segment at every stage of the journey has become a major challenge.
But here is the good news: one of the world's most important B2B advertising platforms has just gained a new "superpower." Smartly — an AI-powered ad tech company — has officially announced the integration of LinkedIn Ads into its unified advertising platform, opening a new era for B2B marketers in Vietnam and globally.
Smartly and LinkedIn: A Long-Awaited Partnership
On September 22, 2026, Smartly — a leading global advertising technology company — announced a major milestone: integrating LinkedIn Ads into its unified advertising platform. This move significantly expands the channels marketers can manage through Smartly, while empowering them to personalize creative content for professional audiences, accelerate video production, and use performance data to continuously improve ad results. Smartly is currently ranked as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ for Creative Advertising Technologies, featuring a platform that unifies media, creative, and intelligence to serve hundreds of global brands.
Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly, shared: "Our partnership with LinkedIn extends Smartly's creative and intelligence capabilities to one of the most critical environments for B2B marketers. When you are engaging with a complex buying group, a single message or creative asset is simply not enough. Smartly helps turn audience intelligence into relevant creative at scale, learning from performance and continuously improving the next ad."
Immediately following the announcement, LinkedIn officially welcomed Smartly into the LinkedIn Marketing Partner Program. As a member, Smartly provides advertisers with the ability to integrate LinkedIn Ads creative, campaign management, and reporting into its platform — all within a seamless workflow. This means marketing teams can scale creative content, streamline execution, and measure performance alongside other channels, all from a single interface.
The Pain Points of B2B Advertising
Before diving into the integration details, let's look back at why this move matters so much.
B2B advertising faces an increasingly harsh reality: purchasing decisions are no longer in the hands of a single person. According to LinkedIn research, 94% of B2B buying groups now use large language models (LLMs) before contacting sales, and AI is playing an increasingly decisive role in which vendor is chosen. This means marketers must not only reach the right person but also create content persuasive enough to capture the attention of both humans and algorithms.
Additionally, a typical B2B buying group consists of multiple stakeholders with different priorities: financial decision-makers care about ROI, department heads care about operational efficiency, and end-users care about practical experience. A single ad cannot satisfy all these needs. B2B marketers need to produce content tailored to each audience segment, each stage of the buyer's journey, and each market — a massive workload without technological assistance.
And this is where Smartly shines.
Three Pillars of Strength: What Does Smartly Bring to LinkedIn?
The integration between Smartly and LinkedIn is built on three core pillars, each addressing a specific pain point for B2B marketers.
1. Making B2B Content Smarter
The first pillar is the ability to combine audience insights from LinkedIn’s professional network with Smartly’s creative intelligence. This allows marketers to create and distribute more relevant content throughout the buying journey — from awareness, consideration, to decision stages.
Instead of relying on guesswork or personal experience, advertisers can use data to understand what each audience segment is searching for, enabling highly personalized messaging. With over 1.3 billion members on LinkedIn, this treasure trove of professional behavior and preference data is an advantage no other platform can easily replicate.
2. Scaling Video for LinkedIn
The second pillar is the ability to scale video production using AI automation. Marketers can use Smartly to produce, version, and iterate videos at scale, quickly turning existing content into video assets suited for LinkedIn.
This is especially crucial as video becomes the dominant format on LinkedIn. According to Wistia's State of Video 2026 report, 81% of businesses now consider LinkedIn a primary channel for sharing video, surpassing even YouTube. LinkedIn videos generate 20 times more shares than any other content format, and video views on the platform grew by 36% in 2024, reaching 154 billion views.
However, producing video at scale is not easy. Each video needs to be tailored to specific audiences, buying stages, and markets — a manual task that consumes time and resources. With Smartly's AI automation capabilities, marketers can generate dozens or even hundreds of different video versions from a single master asset, each optimized for a specific segment.
3. Turning Performance Signals into Action
The third pillar — and perhaps the most important — is the ability to turn performance signals into action through a continuous intelligence loop. Smartly feeds campaign and creative insights into an AI-powered system to detect what is working, identify optimization opportunities, and make smarter decisions for subsequent LinkedIn campaigns.
This means instead of running ads and waiting for results, marketers can continuously learn and adapt. Each ad improves based on data from the previous one, creating a cycle of continuous optimization. Smartly states that its platform generates 92 billion creative signals per week, structured data used to optimize future campaign assets.
Why Does Timing Matter Now?
The partnership between Smartly and LinkedIn does not happen in a vacuum. It reflects profound shifts taking place in B2B marketing.
First, LinkedIn is solidifying its position as the premier B2B channel. According to a Dreamdata report, LinkedIn now accounts for 41% of total B2B ad budgets, up 2% from the previous year, and the platform's ROAS rose to 121% in 2025. LinkedIn's ad revenue is projected to reach $9.7 billion in 2026, an 18.5% increase year-over-year.
Second, video has become an indispensable format in B2B strategies. With 81% of businesses viewing LinkedIn as a primary video channel, the demand for tools capable of producing video at scale has never been higher.
Third, AI is transforming how B2B buying decisions are made. With 94% of buying groups using LLMs prior to sales contact, marketers must ensure their content is not only human-appealing but also algorithm-friendly.
Fourth, pressure on efficiency is mounting. In a volatile economic climate, CMOs need to prove clear ROI from every investment. The measurement and continuous optimization capabilities that Smartly brings represent an unbeatable competitive advantage.
Implications for Vietnamese Marketers
So, what does this mean for businesses and marketers in Vietnam?
Vietnam's B2B market is growing rapidly, with more businesses shifting to digital channels to reach corporate clients. LinkedIn is also becoming an essential platform not only for multinational corporations but also for domestic small and medium enterprises.
With this new integration, Vietnamese marketers can:
- Leverage professional audience data from LinkedIn to create more relevant content for each corporate client segment.
- Scale video production without heavy investments in manual production resources.
- Measure and optimize campaigns within a single interface, saving time and resources.
- Compete more effectively with international corporations through data-driven optimization.
In particular, the ability to generate multiple video versions from a single master asset can be a "lifesaver" for marketing teams in Vietnam — who often work with limited resources yet face growing demands for personalized content.
When B2B Is No Longer Just a Playground for Giants
I have spent two decades witnessing the evolution of B2B marketing in Vietnam. From the days when B2B advertising simply meant sending mass emails and appearing in print magazines, to an era where AI can generate hundreds of personalized video versions for specific audiences — it has been a long journey, and we are still at the very beginning.
The partnership between Smartly and LinkedIn is not just about technology. It is about making powerful tools accessible to everyone. In the past, achieving such capabilities required a large production team, a massive budget, and a complex workflow. Now, with a unified platform and AI assistance, a small marketing team in Vietnam can compete on equal footing with global corporations.
That is good news for all of us.
Have you ever used LinkedIn Ads in your B2B marketing strategy? If so, what is your biggest obstacle — a lack of relevant content, difficulty measuring effectiveness, or insufficient resources to produce video at scale? And if this Smartly-LinkedIn integration becomes available in Vietnam, would you be ready to test it? Share your thoughts below, because in the ever-changing B2B game, those who embrace new technology lead the way!
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