A figure presented at LinkedIn's Indie Summit last week is now circulating widely among B2B marketing teams: 40% of B2B deals are lost to indecision, not because a competitor wins the business. According to Brainlabs, the agency that published a breakdown of the summit's key findings on June 1, 2026, this single number has significant implications for how B2B campaigns are structured, what formats they use, and what they actually measure.

The finding reframes a persistent assumption in business-to-business marketing. Most B2B campaigns are designed to win comparisons - to differentiate a product from its competitors and move a single decision-maker toward conversion. That logic holds when one person controls the buying decision. But according to Brainlabs, the average B2B buying group is ten people, typically including a CMO, a CFO, a security lead, a team lead, and several others who each bring different priorities and different questions they need answered before they are comfortable committing. When none of them actively oppose the purchase but none of them are fully convinced, the deal does not go to a competitor. It stalls.

The structural mismatch in most B2B advertising

The gap between how B2B marketing is designed and how B2B purchasing actually happens is not new, but the data LinkedIn shared at its Indie Summit puts sharper numbers on it. According to Brainlabs' account of the event, 94% of B2B buyers are now using large language models in their buying process. That means the majority of people in a ten-person buying committee have already consulted an AI before a brand's campaign reaches them. They have used LLMs to compare vendors, map the category, and identify the questions they still need answered.

This changes the role that consideration content plays. Positioning content that argues a brand is better than its alternatives arrives after buyers have already run that comparison themselves. What a cautious, informed buying group needs is not a feature comparison but direct engagement with the specific doubts and risks they have already identified. According to Brainlabs, the brief shifts from "here's why we're better than the alternatives" to "here's why the thing you're worried about isn't the obstacle you think it is."

LinkedIn's own research, tracking B2B buyer journeys that now average 272 days, reinforces how long and multi-stakeholder this process has become. The Dreamdata LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks Report 2026, published on March 10, 2026, placed the average B2B buying journey at 272 days and found LinkedIn delivering 121% return on ad spend across more than 3.5 million complete customer journeys. That figure was up from 113% the previous year, reflecting growing B2B advertiser confidence in the platform even as the buying cycle lengthens.

PPC Land has tracked the structural complexity of B2B purchase decisions across multiple data releases. LinkedIn's three-phase B2B launch framework, published on May 26, 2026, cited 6Sense data showing 94% of buying groups now consult large language models before interacting with a sales representative - a figure that directly corroborates what LinkedIn presented at the Indie Summit.

Why video has become the format of choice for buying groups

Given the multi-stakeholder nature of the problem, the format question matters more than it might appear. According to Brainlabs, reaching ten people who may never interact directly with a sales team requires content that travels across an organisation, gets watched more than once, and builds recognition over time rather than requesting a decision after a single exposure. Written content gets read once, typically by one person. A video can be shared in a Slack channel, played at the start of a meeting, and watched independently by a CFO, a team lead, and a procurement contact - each drawing from the same source and arriving at shared context.

LinkedIn's data, as reported by Brainlabs, supports this argument with specifics. Members exposed to video ads are 1.6 times more likely to complete a lead gen form from the same brand. Video on the platform has a 95% retention rate and is growing 60% faster than other content formats. Agencies with video-focused strategies are reportedly growing 20% year on year, while those without a video emphasis are flat.

This data sits within a broader trend that PPC Land has tracked since at least 2024. LinkedIn's Creative Labs research, published on July 15, 2025 and based on analysis of more than 13,000 B2B video advertisements, found that video posts generate 20 times more shares than any other content format on the platform. Video viewership on LinkedIn reached 154 billion views in 2024, up 36% from the prior year. A separate Wistia study published in May 2026 found that 81% of businesses rank LinkedIn as their top channel for sharing videos.

The case for BrandLink and CTV formats, as laid out by Brainlabs, connects directly to this buying group logic. According to Brainlabs, BrandLink delivered a 130% higher video completion rate compared to standard in-feed video. LinkedIn's BrandLink product, launched in beta in May 2025, places 3-to-30-second pre-roll video ads alongside contextually aligned content from publishers and creators directly in members' newsfeeds. LinkedIn's own data from the BrandLink launch indicated that members exposed to a BrandLink campaign were up to 18% more likely to become a lead after subsequently seeing a Lead Gen Form.

LinkedIn's CTV offering, first introduced for US and Canada audiences in April 2024, has expanded significantly since. According to Brainlabs, LinkedIn's CTV offering reaches 94% of members and delivers a 2.6 times stronger awareness lift than linear TV campaigns. The CTV infrastructure has deepened considerably over the past year. In May 2026, LinkedIn and Amazon announced that advertisers in the United States could activate LinkedIn's first-party member data against Microsoft Monetize's streaming TV inventory through Amazon DSP. The Trade Desk was named alongside Amazon DSP as a second external buying path. Together, those routes represent a meaningful expansion of how B2B advertisers can access LinkedIn audiences across the living room screen.

The hook problem: getting video watched in a mobile-first environment

The performance case for video is one thing. Getting video watched on a crowded mobile feed is another. According to Brainlabs, 86% of LinkedIn members are on mobile, which means most video encounters happen on small screens competing against everything else open on someone's phone. LinkedIn's own data, cited by Brainlabs, found a 36% increase in click-through rate when video hooks open with a specific number or statistic. Contrarian statements, questions that name a real pain point, and content that creates genuine urgency also outperform generic hooks consistently. Specificity is the unifying factor: B2B creative that could apply to any product in any category gets scrolled past.

This finding has a technical parallel in LinkedIn's Creative Labs research from July 2025. That study, which used large language models and machine learning to examine over 550,000 video frames across more than 70 dimensions, identified five creative principles driving performance: Cultural Coding, Human Touch, Expert Takes, Attention Hacking, and Inspiring Imagination. Under Attention Hacking, bold colour palettes increased engagement by 15%, graphics emphasising key points drove an 18% lift, and videos with bulleted captions achieved 30% longer dwell times. Executive experts appearing on screen drove a 53% lift in engagement rates. The device targeting rollout that LinkedIn began deploying in Campaign Manager in May 2026 adds a new dimension here: for the first time, B2B advertisers can separate mobile, desktop, and tablet delivery, which has direct implications for creative planning. Mobile-first assumptions - sound-off, vertical format - may need revisiting for desktop-targeted campaigns.

Authenticity over polish

On production quality, Brainlabs surfaces a counterintuitive finding from LinkedIn's own data: lo-fi content, behind-the-scenes moments, and workplace culture posts have been outperforming polished production in several contexts on the platform. The explanation is not that quality does not matter, but that a cautious buying group is evaluating trust as much as product. A buyer who has already done their research using LLMs and is looking for reasons to believe - rather than reasons to consider - responds to signals of authenticity faster than to high-production formats.

This aligns with a direction LinkedIn's B2B Institute has been building toward for some time. Its December 2025 research, covered by PPC Land in the article why LinkedIn says building "owned prominence" beats rented ads, argued that brand recommendations are increasingly generated through complex algorithms and third-party analysis, with little direct influence from paid efforts. A brand with an authoritative, widely cited presence across professional environments surfaces more favourably in AI-driven research than one whose presence is concentrated in a single advertising channel.

The Indie Summit data reinforces that framing. If 94% of buyers are consulting LLMs before a brand's campaign reaches them, and those LLMs synthesise existing market consensus rather than generating original views, then a brand's organic footprint - the credibility it has accumulated across professional environments before the ad appears - shapes how paid media performs.

What the indecision problem costs

The practical consequence of the 40% figure is a pipeline problem most B2B teams may be underestimating. Campaigns designed to win a comparison are not designed to close the gap between ten people who are not convinced and ten people who are comfortable enough to move. Those are structurally different briefs.

According to Brainlabs, the strategic question becomes not "how do we beat the competition" but "how do we make it easy for a group to say yes." That shift changes what content is made, where it runs, and what metrics are used to evaluate it. A campaign measured on lead volume from a single decision-maker stage of the funnel does not capture whether it has built shared confidence across a buying committee.

LinkedIn's measurement infrastructure has expanded to address this. The Revenue Attribution Report, which gained company-level measurement capabilities in July 2025, allows marketers to track campaign influence from first touch to closed deals rather than attributing outcomes to a single individual. The Company Intelligence API, launched in September 2025, enabled attribution partners to track organisation-level engagement across paid and organic touchpoints. Frequency capping for brand awareness campaigns, introduced in July 2025, gave advertisers controls over impression limits between 3 and 30 exposures per member within seven-day periods - which matters specifically for buying groups, where the goal is sustained, repeated familiarity across multiple stakeholders rather than a single high-impact exposure.

The LinkedIn Ads Agency Certification program, launched in May 2026, reflects a related evolution in how agencies are expected to engage with the platform. The certification requires Business Manager setup, invoicing, and Marketing Academy completions. Whether it changes buying behaviour in the agency market is an open question, but the program's framing - competence across the full buying journey, not just top-of-funnel lead generation - aligns with the structural shift Brainlabs is describing.

B2B paid social has been a persistent growth area in digital advertising budgets. Dreamdata's March 2026 report found LinkedIn Ads accounting for 41% of total B2B paid media budgets, up from 39% the prior year. The Google Network still commands 46% overall, but no single Google product reaches 41% on its own - LinkedIn holds that position as the largest individual advertising channel by expenditure in B2B. The DoubleVerify integration with LinkedIn Audience Network, announced in late May 2026, adds post-bid measurement to LinkedIn's third-party publisher inventory for the first time, addressing advertiser concern about the quality of placements outside the LinkedIn feed itself.

The indecision number - 40% of deals stalling without a competitor winning - is not a product or pricing failure. It is a marketing architecture failure. The formats, measurement approaches, and creative principles that Brainlabs outlines from the Indie Summit data are all oriented toward a different kind of campaign than most B2B teams currently run.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Brainlabs, a global performance marketing agency, authored the June 1, 2026 report summarising findings from LinkedIn's Indie Summit. The findings draw on LinkedIn's own platform data and research, covering B2B marketers and agencies running paid social campaigns.

What: According to LinkedIn's data presented at the Indie Summit and reported by Brainlabs, 40% of B2B deals are lost to indecision rather than to competitors winning. The average B2B buying group is ten people. 94% of B2B buyers now use LLMs in their purchasing process. Video ads on LinkedIn produce a 1.6x lift in lead gen form completions, with a 95% retention rate and 60% faster growth than other content formats. BrandLink delivered 130% higher video completion rates than standard in-feed video, and LinkedIn's CTV offering produces a 2.6x stronger awareness lift than linear TV. Opening video hooks with a specific number or statistic produces a 36% increase in click-through rate.

When: The LinkedIn Indie Summit took place in late May 2026. Brainlabs published its findings on June 1, 2026. The article draws on a chain of LinkedIn platform and measurement developments stretching back to April 2024, when LinkedIn first launched CTV Ads.

Where: LinkedIn's Indie Summit was the primary event. The data points to LinkedIn's platform as the main advertising environment covered, with the CTV findings spanning LinkedIn's publisher network and, since May 2026, Microsoft Monetize's streaming TV inventory available via Amazon DSP and The Trade Desk.

Why: The 40% indecision figure matters because most B2B campaigns are built to win comparisons, not to build shared confidence across a multi-stakeholder buying group. As 94% of buyers enter campaigns already informed by LLM research, the marketing challenge has shifted from persuasion to reassurance across multiple decision-makers simultaneously. Video - particularly through BrandLink and CTV formats - is the format LinkedIn's data identifies as best suited to reaching buying groups repeatedly and building familiarity at scale.