B2B Advertising Examples: 20 Campaigns and Why They Worked

The best B2B advertising examples, from Workday's Super Bowl spot to Loom's account-personalized LinkedIn ads, share three traits: a sharp insight about the buyer, a creative idea that carries the product's value, and a channel chosen for where that buyer pays attention. The 20 campaigns below show all three, including Spotify's audio track hidden inside Microsoft Excel and IBM Watson's televised contest against Jeopardy! champions. They are grouped by format into brand video and TV, LinkedIn, and experiential or stunt work. Each gets the same breakdown of audience, channel, hook, why it worked and the lesson to borrow. In October 2026, the same principles apply to the newer places buyers research, such as Reddit threads, AI answers and peer reviews. Use these B2B advertising examples as a reference library rather than a template to copy.

What counts as a B2B advertising example

A B2B advertising example is a paid or sponsored placement that sells a product or service to businesses, where the buyer is a company and the decision usually involves several people. That rules out much of what lists like this normally include. Blog content, webinars and organic social posts are marketing, but they are not advertising.

Some campaigns sit on the line. Squarespace, Canva and Mailchimp sell to small businesses and solo operators, so their ads look consumer-like. They still qualify because the buyer purchases a business tool with business money. Where an example stretches the definition (a trade show booth, a mailed box), it is included because a company paid to put a message in front of a defined business audience.

A LinkedIn document ad and a Super Bowl spot need different creative, budgets and success metrics, so the channel decision shapes everything after it. For how teams split spend across formats, see our guide to B2B advertising channels and budgets.

The 20 campaigns at a glance

The 20 campaigns cover brand video, LinkedIn, direct mail, trade show and stunt formats. Judge each one on a KPI that matches its objective rather than on views or awards.

B2B creative ads: brand video and TV campaigns

Brand video works in B2B when it attaches one product truth to a story memorable enough to survive the months between first exposure and a buying committee's shortlist.

1. Workday: "Rock Star"

• Audience and channel: HR and finance decision-makers, reached through a Super Bowl spot.
• Hook: The ad pokes fun at corporate jargon (calling everyone a "rock star") while promoting the software.

Why it worked: It used the biggest consumer stage to joke about something only office workers recognize, so business viewers felt the ad was for them. Lesson: Mass-reach media can still target B2B buyers if the joke is an insider's joke.

2. Slack: "The Big Meeting"

• Audience and channel: Teams and the managers who choose collaboration tools, via brand video.
• Hook: A musical that sings its way through workplace collaboration features.

Why it worked: People forget feature lists and remember songs. Turning features into lyrics made them stick. Lesson: If you must communicate features, give them a format people replay.

3. Intuit QuickBooks: "For the Hero Behind the Heroes"

• Audience and channel: Accountants, who influence which software their small business clients use.
• Hook: A humorous ad that casts accountants as strategic heroes.

Why it worked: It flattered an influencer group that rarely gets credit, and influencers who feel seen recommend the brand. Lesson: Advertise to the person who recommends the tool as well as the person who signs.

4. Salesforce: "Gold Rush"

• Audience and channel: Enterprise leaders weighing AI investments, via brand video.
• Hook: A Wild West metaphor that frames AI and data as a new frontier.

Why it worked: A gold rush implies urgency and the risk of being left behind, which is the emotion that moves an AI budget. Lesson: A familiar metaphor explains an abstract category faster than any product claim.

5. 1Password: "Cybersecurity and Skin Care"

• Audience and channel: Security buyers and the employees who adopt password tools, via celebrity-led video.
• Hook: Security habits compared to a daily skin care routine.

Why it worked: Security advertising usually runs on fear. Pairing it with a daily, low-stakes routine made good habits feel normal. Lesson: In a category full of fear, a light tone sets you apart.

6. Matomo: "GA4 Oppenheimer Parody Trailer"

• Audience and channel: Analytics users frustrated with Google Analytics 4, via online video.
• Hook: A parody trailer positioning Matomo as the privacy-focused alternative.

Why it worked: It rode a cultural moment and a real switching trigger at the same time. Viewers who disliked GA4 got a laugh and an exit. Lesson: Competitive ads land hardest when they time a known pain point to a known cultural reference.

7. Mailchimp: "Guess Less, Sell More"

• Audience and channel: Small business marketers, via witty animated commercials.
• Hook: Guesswork contrasted with data-driven marketing.

Why it worked: The line is the value proposition. Viewers could repeat it, and the animation showed the before-and-after clearly. Lesson: Write a tagline a buyer could use to justify the purchase internally.

8. Pinterest: "The P is for Performance"

• Audience and channel: Performance marketers who allocate ad budgets, via a mini-movie series.
• Hook: Action-film-style episodes that present Pinterest's ad product suite.

Why it worked: Pinterest needed advertisers to see it as a performance channel as well as a source of inspiration, and pop-culture formatting earned attention in a crowded ad-platform market. Lesson: When fighting a perception, make the repositioning the campaign's title.

LinkedIn B2B marketing examples

The best LinkedIn B2B ads pair a narrow, role-based audience with a concrete hook or offer, because LinkedIn's targeting rewards precision more than spectacle. For more breakdowns, see our collection of LinkedIn ad examples worth studying.

9. Loom: personalized ABM ads

• Audience and channel: Named target accounts, via LinkedIn ads.
• Hook: Logos and copy that changed dynamically for each prospect company.

Why it worked: Seeing your own company's logo in a feed stops the scroll and signals relevance before a word is read. Lesson: Account-based ads earn attention by proving the advertiser did its homework.

10. Vanta: free ISO 27001 checklist

• Audience and channel: Compliance professionals, via a LinkedIn single-image ad.
• Hook: A free, practical ISO 27001 checklist.

Why it worked: The offer matched a task already on the audience's list. The ad didn't have to persuade anyone, because the checklist was useful on its own. Lesson: The best lead magnet is a tool the buyer would otherwise build themselves.

11. Carta: "Is your cap table an asset?"

• Audience and channel: Startup founders and CFOs, via a LinkedIn single-image ad.
• Hook: A question that reframes an admin document as a strategic one.

Why it worked: Questions invite self-assessment, and a founder unsure of the answer has a reason to click. Lesson: Question-led copy works when the honest answer creates mild anxiety.

12. LSEG: interactive document ad

• Audience and channel: Financial professionals, via a LinkedIn document ad.
• Hook: Thought leadership turned into an in-feed PDF and whitepaper experience.

Why it worked: Document ads let readers preview the substance before handing over their details, which suits skeptical senior audiences. LeanData uses the same format to share market demand and GTM efficiency research with revenue teams. Lesson: Show some of the content up front, because gating everything weakens trust.

13. Visa: anti-fraud carousel

• Audience and channel: Payments and fraud teams, via a LinkedIn carousel.
• Hook: Concise cards on anti-fraud solutions, ending in a direct whitepaper download.

Why it worked: Each card made one point, and the CTA was explicit. Slack uses the same structure on LinkedIn, with one benefit per card backed by strong visuals. Lesson: Carousels reward discipline, so put one idea on each card and one action at the end.

14. Salesforce: localized single-image ad

• Audience and channel: Mid-market decision-makers in India, via a LinkedIn single-image ad.
• Hook: Real local customers and Indian imagery.

Why it worked: Global brands often run one creative everywhere. Local faces and settings told buyers the product fits companies like theirs. Lesson: Localize the proof as well as the language.

15. Fleximize: "Inflation?"

• Audience and channel: Small business owners, via a minimalist LinkedIn ad.
• Hook: One word built around a pressing economic worry.

Why it worked: Minimal creative stands out in a feed full of busy graphics, and the single word named the buyer's problem at once. Metadata's bright orange "ABM for Instagram" ad uses the same contrast tactic. Lesson: A low-budget ad can win on clarity alone.

Experiential, direct mail and stunt campaigns

Stunt and experiential campaigns work in B2B when they put the product, or the buyer's problem, somewhere unexpected enough to be talked about afterwards.

16. Spotify: "A Song for Every CMO"

• Audience and channel: CMOs, Spotify's ad buyers, via a personalized audio track embedded in Microsoft Excel.
• Hook: Meeting marketers inside the spreadsheet tool they use every day.

Why it worked: The format was so out of place that it stuck, and it demonstrated audio's reach in a single gesture. Lesson: Put the ad inside the buyer's workflow and the placement makes the argument for you.

17. IBM Watson: "Jeopardy!" challenge

• Audience and channel: Enterprise technology buyers, via a televised contest against human champions.
• Hook: A live, high-stakes product demonstration.

Why it worked: A public demo is proof that cannot be faked, and it generated major media attention that reinforced IBM's credibility in cognitive computing. Lesson: For complex technology, a visible demonstration beats any claim.

18. Halo Solutions: "Black Box Campaign"

• Audience and channel: Safety leaders, via physical, story-driven boxes in the mail.
• Hook: A surprise package that made an abstract risk tangible.

Why it worked: Physical mail cut through inbox clutter, and the box turned an invisible safety risk into an object. Lesson: For a short list of high-value accounts, direct mail is underused.

19. Ericsson: "MWC 2025 Experience"

• Audience and channel: Telecom operators and partners, via a booth at Mobile World Congress.
• Hook: An immersive, story-led brand experience instead of a product display.

Why it worked: Trade show floors are full of near-identical booths, and a narrative space gave visitors a reason to stay and talk. Lesson: Spend event budget on telling a story rather than on renting a stand.

20. Ahrefs: "How Do You Pronounce Ahrefs?"

• Audience and channel: SEO practitioners, via UGC-style social video.
• Hook: Social listening revealed that people were unsure how to say the brand name.

Why it worked: It turned a small confusion into participation, and it cost little to make. Lesson: Your audience's own conversations are a free source of creative ideas.

Where Tellr fits in a B2B advertising program

Tellr fits B2B advertising programs that need paid creative connected to the places buyers now research. It runs a managed earned-visibility program that puts brands inside the Reddit threads, Google results, AI answers and ad feeds their buyers read, with guardrails, approvals and an audit trail. A senior team runs it as one governed program on Tellr's own platform, so the insight behind a LinkedIn ad can also shape a Reddit reply and a comparison page. It is built for marketing teams spending $10k+ a month at companies worth $500M+ or with 200+ employees. A small team testing its first LinkedIn ads will get more from self-serve ad libraries and native platform tools.

• Paid media covers category ad intelligence and ready-to-run creative.
• Reddit work includes subreddit mapping, a daily thread radar and guideline-checked replies behind an approval gate.
• Content means comparison pages, reviews and answer-shaped articles built to be quoted by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, published to the CMS.
• Answer visibility tracking shows each week who Google and its AI Overviews cite for the category's queries.

What the best B2B ads have in common

The best B2B ads combine a specific audience insight, one memorable creative device and a channel that fits how the buyer works. Build the patterns below into your own creative process; our guide to ad creative in crowded B2B categories goes further on execution.

Recurring creative mechanics

• Insider humor: Workday, QuickBooks and Slack joke about real work life instead of telling generic gags.
• Borrowed metaphors: Salesforce's gold rush and 1Password's skin care routine explain abstract categories in one image.
• Proof by demonstration: IBM Watson and Spotify show rather than claim.
• Utility offers: Vanta, LSEG and Visa give the buyer something useful in exchange for attention.
• Relevance signals: Loom's logos and Salesforce's local imagery tell viewers the ad is for them.

Best examples by campaign type

Common mistakes to avoid

• Feature-heavy copy: listing capabilities instead of the outcome, a problem Slack solved by setting features to music.
• Weak segmentation: one creative for every role, when Carta and Vanta show how a single role-specific hook beats broad messaging.
• Generic creative: stock imagery and "streamline your workflow" lines that any competitor could run.
• No proof: claims with no customer, demo or data behind them.
• Overreliance on lead forms: gating every asset, which LSEG's document ad avoids by previewing content in-feed.

A five-question test for any B2B ad

1. Can you name the single role this ad is for, and would that person recognize their own problem in it?
2. Is there one creative device (metaphor, joke, offer, demo), or are several competing for attention?
3. Does the ad contain proof, such as a customer, a demonstration or a useful asset?
4. Does the channel fit the buyer's moment, as LinkedIn suits role-based offers and TV suits category framing?
5. Is the call to action proportionate to the funnel stage, so awareness ads ask for attention and lead ads ask for a download?

Each of these B2B advertising examples starts with one buyer the team understood well. It gives that buyer one idea to remember and puts it where they already spend their working day.

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