An estimated 61% of global B2B marketing budgets are now spent on search and social media, with Google and LinkedIn taking the largest share of those investments.
This explains why competition among advertising platforms isn’t limited to audience size anymore, but also to who can help brands produce campaigns that influence buying decisions.
That is the backdrop to LinkedIn’s launch of BrandWorks, a new in-house creative and marketing team built to help advertisers develop stronger campaigns.
At first, it looks like another agency-style service, but when you look closer, you see something much bigger.
For years, LinkedIn has competed by offering access to professionals and business decision-makers, but with BrandWorks, it is moving further up the value chain.
It is going beyond simply selling advertising space to now helping brands shape the ideas, messages and creative work that appear on its platform.
That naturally leads us to a question.
Can BrandWorks challenge Meta Creative Shop, one of the most established creative advisory teams in digital advertising?
The short answer is yes, but only within the B2B market. Beyond that, the two businesses are competing from very different positions.
Advertising has changed dramatically over the past few years.
Creating an advert is not the biggest challenge. Brands can produce images, videos and marketing materials much faster than before. The difficult part is making campaigns that capture attention, build trust and deliver measurable business results.
That has made creative strategy more valuable than creative production itself.
Both LinkedIn BrandWorks and Meta Creative Shop exist to solve that problem. They help advertisers create campaigns that perform better on their respective platforms.
The similarity ends there.
While Meta focuses on helping brands reach billions of consumers across multiple social platforms, LinkedIn is concentrating on businesses selling to other businesses.
Understanding that difference is essential before deciding which platform provides the stronger proposition.
What is LinkedIn BrandWorks?
BrandWorks is not a new advertising platform, nor is it another software product.
It is a specialist team of marketing strategists, creative experts and campaign advisers that works directly with advertisers to improve campaign performance.
LinkedIn launched the initiative internally in March 2026 before officially unveiling it in June. Since then, the team has expanded by about 60%, recruiting talent from companies including Meta, TikTok and X.
LinkedIn expects BrandWorks to reach an annualised revenue run rate of $100 million in its next financial year.
The service goes well beyond designing adverts, helping businesses develop campaign strategy, refine messaging, create content, work with professional creators, execute event marketing and improve advertising performance throughout a campaign.
Its client list already includes major enterprise companies such as SAP, IBM, ServiceNow and Webflow.
One of its biggest strengths is its connection to Top Voices 360, a programme that matches brands with respected LinkedIn creators for sponsored content. Between May 2025 and May 2026, the programme generated more than $20 million in revenue.
What is Meta Creative Shop?
Meta Creative Shop has operated for years as Meta’s strategic creative consultancy for advertisers using Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads.
Unlike a traditional advertising agency, it works with brands to improve campaign performance through platform-specific creative advice.
Its teams help advertisers build campaigns around consumer behaviour, optimise creative assets for Reels and short-form video, test different advertising formats and improve performance using Meta’s measurement tools.
The better an advert performs, the more likely advertisers are to continue investing in Meta’s platforms. That is the basis of its objective.
Creative Shop therefore sits at the centre of Meta’s advertising ecosystem rather than operating as a standalone business.
LinkedIn BrandWorks versus Meta Creative Shop
Although both services provide creative support, their priorities differ significantly.
LinkedIn focuses almost entirely on B2B marketing.
Its customers are enterprise software companies, financial institutions, consulting firms, technology vendors and organisations selling high-value products to businesses.
Meta serves almost every industry imaginable.
Retailers, entertainment companies, restaurants, travel brands, gaming companies, app developers and direct-to-consumer businesses all rely on Meta’s advertising ecosystem.
The difference becomes even more obvious when looking at audience data.
LinkedIn’s greatest advantage is professional identity.
Advertisers can target chief executives, procurement leaders, finance directors, human resources executives and technology decision-makers with remarkable precision.
Meta, on the other hand, understands consumer interests, browsing habits, purchase behaviour and entertainment preferences across an enormous global audience.
That makes each platform effective for different reasons.
LinkedIn helps brands reach people because of their professional role.
Meta helps brands reach people because of their personal interests and behaviours.
The strategy behind BrandWorks
This is where BrandWorks becomes more interesting. LinkedIn did not launch the service simply because Meta already had Creative Shop.
It launched BrandWorks because the platform itself is changing.
Video is becoming one of LinkedIn’s fastest-growing content formats, particularly among Millennials and Gen Z professionals. According to the company, video posts from chief executives have increased by 68% over the past two years.
That trend is changing how professionals consume business content.
Instead of relying solely on written thought leadership, executives are communicating more through video.
LinkedIn wants advertisers to participate in that shift.
Its BrandLink programme allows advertisers to place campaigns alongside premium video content, and the company expects BrandLink revenue to nearly triple during the current financial year.
BrandWorks fits naturally into that strategy.
Rather than leaving advertisers to develop campaigns on their own, LinkedIn wants to guide the creative process from planning through execution.
It is a move designed to increase campaign quality while encouraging brands to invest more heavily in LinkedIn’s growing video ecosystem.
Where each platform is chief
LinkedIn BrandWorks has several strengths.
It has access to verified professional data, deep relationships with enterprise marketers and an audience made up of business decision-makers. That makes it particularly valuable for companies with long sales cycles and complex purchasing decisions.
Its weakness is scale.
LinkedIn is much smaller than Meta in advertising reach and overall advertiser volume.
Meta Creative Shop enjoys the opposite advantage.
Its platforms reach billions of users, giving advertisers unmatched consumer scale.
Meta also benefits from years of creative testing across countless industries, allowing advertisers to refine campaigns using enormous volumes of behavioural data.
Its challenge is relevance in highly specialised B2B marketing.
A viral consumer campaign does not necessarily persuade a chief information officer to purchase enterprise software.
That is where LinkedIn’s professional environment creates a competitive edge.
Can BrandWorks really challenge Meta?
It depends on how success is measured. If the benchmark is advertising scale, Meta is well ahead. Its ecosystem, advertiser base and consumer reach are vastly larger.
However, if the benchmark is premium B2B creative services, LinkedIn has a genuine opportunity. The company is not working to become another Meta.
Instead, it is building a specialised business around enterprise marketing, professional creators and business-focused storytelling.
That strategy makes sense because LinkedIn already owns something Meta cannot easily replicate, a network built around careers, industries and verified professional relationships.
BrandWorks strengthens that advantage by adding strategic creative expertise to an audience that many enterprise marketers already consider indispensable.
Verdict
LinkedIn BrandWorks should not be viewed as an attempt to copy Meta Creative Shop.
It is a calculated effort to strengthen LinkedIn’s position within B2B advertising.
Meta will almost certainly remain the preferred destination for brands seeking mass consumer reach.
LinkedIn, however, is looking to become the preferred partner for organisations targeting executives, business buyers and enterprise decision-makers.
