LinkedIn Says Creator-Led Ads Grew 63% and Paid Company Pages 121%
LinkedIn published the ratios a day after Microsoft's October 28 earnings dropped its revenue line. Its ads and Premium now sit in a Search and advertising line that grew 12% excluding traffic acquisition costs.
TL;DR
- LinkedIn said creator-led ads grew 63%, paid video 25%, and Premium Company Page subscriptions 121% in Microsoft's September quarter.
- LinkedIn's fastest disclosed growth comes from selling people and pages, and B2B demand teams should budget for both on pipeline.
- Microsoft no longer reports LinkedIn revenue, so ask your rep for pipeline data before the paid page tier gets a budget line.
Microsoft reported its fiscal first quarter of 2027 on October 28, and for the first time its earnings release carried no LinkedIn revenue line. The next day LinkedIn published ratios of its own. In a statement credited to CEO Dan Shapero, LinkedIn said creator-led ads grew 63% year over year and paid video ads grew 25%. Paid subscriptions to Premium Company Pages rose 121%. Feed views were up more than 16%, the same statement said. On the earnings call, Satya Nadella said time spent viewing feed content rose 15% and that LinkedIn has more than 1.4 billion members.
None of those growth rates comes with a dollar base, and none appears in Microsoft's filing. They still show where LinkedIn is pushing. Its two fastest published numbers are for ads built around creators and a paid tier on the company page. LinkedIn didn't publish a number for click inventory. For a B2B demand team, each of those two products deserves its own budget line, judged on pipeline.
LinkedIn put its fastest numbers on creators and pages, with no base
The creator figure fits a pattern that's been building for a year. When LinkedIn opened creator search, sponsorships started moving toward a rate card. LinkedIn's 63% suggests that buyers now pay for the format inside LinkedIn's own ad product as well as through side deals with creators.
The page tier is newer. LinkedIn confirmed to TechCrunch in April 2024 that it was testing Premium Company Page with small and medium businesses. TechCrunch cited a marketing consultant's note that fees started at $99.99 a month per page, or $839.88 per page for an annual subscription. LinkedIn still doesn't publish the price, according to consultant Lilach Bullock's reading of LinkedIn's help pages. By Bullock's account, the tier sells a 365-day list of page visitors, automatic invitations to engaged members, eligibility for verification and a custom call-to-action button. She also reports that the ads-credit perk ended February 28, 2025. We read that to mean the 121% came without an ad-credit sweetener, though Bullock doesn't make that point. And the 121% counts subscriptions. It says nothing about revenue.
The missing total is the strongest case against reading much into any of this. Microsoft moved LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and Premium Subscriptions into Search and advertising. That line grew 10% to $6.55 billion, or 12% excluding traffic acquisition costs. Microsoft's finance chief credited higher rate and volume across LinkedIn, Edge, and Bing without splitting them out, PPC Land reported. PPC Land's reading of the recast series also puts that 12% a point below the June quarter. If creator ads and paid pages are growing that fast but don't lift the blended line, their bases are probably small. The last full LinkedIn figure was fiscal 2026 revenue of $19.8 billion, up 11%, per FourWeekMBA's reading of the filings. Microsoft's July outlook of high-single-digit LinkedIn growth now has nothing to be checked against.
Small bases don't change the signal. A company chooses which numbers to publish, and LinkedIn chose creators and pages. Its product work and its sales team's pitch will likely follow them.
What this means for B2B demand-gen and marketing leaders
Give creator-led ads their own line inside the LinkedIn plan. Write ad rights into every creator contract so the post can run as paid, and count your own executives as creators when their posts can carry the ad. Judge the line on pipeline from the accounts it reaches, the same way you judge Sponsored Content, and leave engagement out of the verdict.
If you trial Premium Company Page, set the test before you pay. Decide where the 365-day visitor list goes (your CRM, matched to accounts) and what follower-sourced pipeline over one quarter would justify renewal. Ask your rep for the current price in writing, since LinkedIn doesn't publish it.
At your next LinkedIn planning call, ask the rep for pipeline or retention data from paid company pages at companies your size. LinkedIn hasn't published any. If the rep can't produce it, keep the tier on a one-quarter trial with a written kill threshold, and move the money to creator-led ads if the visitor list doesn't turn into meetings.
Microsoft is unlikely to bring back a LinkedIn revenue line, so ratios like these may be all the public gets from here. Ask your rep for your own account's numbers each quarter, because they're the only base you'll have.
Give creator-led ads their own line inside the LinkedIn plan.
At your next LinkedIn planning call, ask your rep for pipeline or retention data from paid company pages at companies your size. If none comes, keep the tier on a one-quarter trial with a written kill threshold.
