LinkedIn has expanded its advertising capabilities into Connected TV (CTV), marking a shift in how B2B marketers reach audiences beyond the confines of professional platforms. The move enables brands to extend LinkedIn’s professional targeting—based on job roles or industries—into OTT and smart TV environments through adtech integrations. It, therefore, reflects a broader industry push towards combining data precision with high-attention and large-screen formats.
Framing the rationale behind this expansion, Sachin Sharma, Director, Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn India notes, “For B2B brands today, attention is a scarce and valuable currency. It’s earned most effectively in environments that are both high-attention and contextually aligned with the brand’s message. Increasingly, that’s happening on streaming TV where storytelling has depth, viewing is intentional, and brand impact is stronger.” He adds that the intent is to extend LinkedIn’s professional data beyond its feed, allowing marketers to link back exposure on CTV to engagement and outcomes on the platform—all of this while maintaining a privacy-safe and relevant experience.
This development sits at the intersection of two long-standing industry pursuits—achieving precise audience targeting and accessing high-attention, premium environments. Historically, B2B advertising has heavily leaned on low-attention digital formats, while television, although impactful, lacked the granularity of audience targeting. By bringing professional identity data into CTV, the industry is beginning to explore whether this divide can finally be bridged.
Abhinay Bhasin, Senior Vice President, Product & Technology, dentsu explains from a planning and execution standpoint, “For the platform and agency, it opens up new avenues of precision targeting that was otherwise limited to a few platforms. Traditionally, precision targeting was within the walled gardens of smaller screens, whereas CTV offered scale and attention with limited targeting. This move brings the two together more meaningfully.”
Beyond targeting, Bhasin notes that the real impact is on how campaigns are planned across screens. With richer behavioural signals now feeding into CTV, storytelling can become more cohesive. Also, mid-funnel influence can get bolstered through better audience understanding, allowing brands to move beyond demographic-led planning towards intent-driven engagement.
How does evolved planning translate into actual media strategy? “LinkedIn has always owned professional identity data—job roles, seniority, industry—which is high-intent but confined to smaller screens,” says Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO, ReBid. “Extending this to Connected TV pairs precision targeting with high-attention formats—a powerful combination,” he adds.
Explaining this further through a full-funnel lens, he highlights that the real opportunity lies in how different touchpoints are sequenced. By using CTV for high-impact storytelling, followed by reinforcement across LinkedIn and programmatic channels, and finally capturing intent through performance media, marketers can create continuity across the journey in a more structured way. Essentially, when connected through a unified data layer, brands can measure how CTV contributes to downstream outcomes—such as pipeline and qualified leads—rather than just reach.
But even with stronger sequencing and measurement, can this level of precision stand its ground in a fragmented market like India? Rajiv Rajagopal, Head - Advanced TV, WPP Media India adds a note of realism: “LinkedIn brings true B2B targeting to premium CTV environments, shifts B2B from digital-only, low-attention formats to high-impact video with high-value audiences, and is especially relevant for sectors like SaaS, BFSI, auto, luxury categories and enterprise tech companies.” However, he points out that this is less about reaching an exact individual and more about improving the probability of reaching relevant decision-making households. In an ecosystem where identity resolution is still evolving and devices are often shared, precision becomes directional rather than exact, making execution as critical as intent.
For those operating closely within the CTV ecosystem, the challenges appear to be far more structural. Somendu Singh, Chief Contributor at CTV SCALE raises concerns around the limitations of the current landscape. He points out that scale and measurability remain key, particularly in fragmented environments where a large portion of inventory is not fully trackable.
There is also the issue of identity mismatch. Fundamentally, CTV is a household device rather than a personal one. Even if professional data can be matched to a user, the actual viewer may differ, leading to inconsistencies in targeting. For instance, while a campaign may be aimed at a senior decision-maker like a CMO, the same television could just as easily be used by someone else in the household. He suggested that this creates a gap between intended and actual exposure, which could dilute effectiveness, especially for highly specific B2B messaging.
But on the other hand, for brands and advertisers, the appeal lies as much in perception as in targeting. Atul Bansal, Vice President, Head of Marketing at GoKwik highlights how CTV changes the nature of exposure itself: “A few years ago, getting a brand on TV required massive budgets and guesswork. Today, CTV has turned TV into a digital ad buy, but to the person sitting on their couch, it still feels like a premium TV ad. That perception builds trust.”
Bansal underlined what the opportunity means for B2B brands—reaching decision-makers in a high-attention environment while maintaining consistent presence across long buying cycles. He further noted that instead of catching users in fragmented moments, brands can now stay top-of-mind even when audiences are relaxed and more receptive.
From a broader advertising ecosystem perspective, Varun Mohan, Chief Commercial Officer, MiQ India says, “Professional targeting has largely been confined to desktop and mobile environments, which focus on mid or lower-funnel objectives. Bringing that into CTV allows brands to engage the same audience earlier in the journey, in a more premium and distraction-free setting.” He further explains that this shift allows brands to move upstream in their engagement, using CTV to build narrative and credibility before reinforcing it across mobile and desktop touchpoints. This creates stronger continuity between brand-building and performance efforts, rather than treating them as separate functions.
At the same time, he highlights that execution will be critical, particularly in ensuring meaningful scale. Maintaining privacy compliance and building measurement frameworks that can clearly demonstrate incremental impact without over-segmentation would be difficult.
However, as targeting becomes more sophisticated within personal viewing environments, the question of user experience becomes harder to ignore. The living room, unlike a mobile feed, is a shared and often leisure-driven space. This introduces a delicate balance between relevance and intrusion. Bansal acknowledged this nuance, noting, “You have to respect the living room; nobody wants a hard-hitting B2B software pitch interrupting their weekend movie night.”
Singh echoes that such messaging may not always land as intended, as CTV environments are primarily built for entertainment. When audiences are watching leisure content, they are not necessarily in a mindset to engage with business-focused communication.
Ronita Mitra, Marketing and Growth Leader on the other hand shares a different perspective. “Conventionally, professional identity and personal consumption have been contextually separated. LinkedIn for work, OTT for leisure. What this expansion does is collapse that boundary, redefining how B2B audiences are engaged. In OTT environments, where distractions are fewer and engagement is higher, professionally relevant advertising is more likely to cut through and feel like discovery rather than interruption,” she says. She indicates that the effectiveness of such messaging will depend on how well it aligns with context, as relevance in personal viewing spaces must be balanced carefully to avoid feeling intrusive.
These concerns introduce an important counterpoint to the optimism surrounding LinkedIn’s move. While the integration of data and CTV opens new possibilities, it also exposes the limitations of current infrastructure, particularly in markets like India, where identity resolution and measurement frameworks are still evolving.
Even among more optimistic voices, there is an acknowledgment that this is not a fully solved ecosystem. As Bhasin notes, the real strength of this shift lies in how effectively different signals and touchpoints are brought together across screens, rather than in any one isolated channel. The emphasis, as several experts suggest, is on directional precision rather than perfect targeting, and on incremental improvement rather than immediate transformation.
The success of such initiatives may ultimately depend on how well they balance ambition with execution. Hence, LinkedIn’s entry into CTV is less a definitive solution than an evolving proposition—one that signals where B2B advertising is headed, even as the industry continues to determine how it will ultimately take shape.
