B2B Ad Basics: 4 Powerful B2B Advertising Examples
At the end of the day, all B2B ads can be categorized into these 4 basic ad categories. Here are B2B advertising examples you should definitely be running and the key reasons why.
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Your B2B H1 Marketing Plan: A 2026 Full-Funnel Marketing Strategy
Topics Covered:
After the holiday slump, the first half of the year is full steam ahead for B2B marketers. What’s your marketing plan?
In 2026, the buyer’s journey has shifted toward AI-assisted research and zero-click content, so a generic plan is a recipe for flat growth.
Your 2026 H1 plan must move beyond lead gen. This roadmap provides a month-by-month strategic breakdown with the necessary frameworks to ensure your brand is seen on the platforms where your audience lives. We’ll give you insights into ABM, the technical nuances of a clean MarTech stack, and the psychology of B2B advertising in an AI world.
Why H1 Planning is Different in 2026
The shift to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Traditional SEO used to be a staple of any marketing plan, and after a few years of push and pull since AI entered the scene, now it works alongside GEO. These days, Google recognizes GEO (generative engine optimization) as a subset of SEO.
B2B buyers use AI copilots to summarize information for them. Your H1 plan should prioritize GEO, which involves structuring your content so that AI models can easily recommend your brand.
The death of spray and pray advertising
In 2026, the goal is efficiency. Let’s shift from blanket awareness campaigns to intent-based advertising. Intent-based advertising uses data to find buyers who are already in-market, rather than trying to convince the entire internet that they have a problem you can solve.
January: The Month of Alignment and MarTech Cleanup
Start the year off right with a clean tech stack and clear KPIs, OKRs, and reporting.
Data audit your MarTech stack
Good H1 performance is powered by clean data. Before launching a single ad, audit your infrastructure. A clean stack in 2026 is about interoperability. Let’s focus on tools that enable one another, rather than simply having the right tools:
The data audit: Ensure your CRM (for instance, Salesforce or HubSpot) and your Marketing Automation Platform (like Marketo or Pardot) are syncing in real-time. Duplicate records are the silent killer of personalization. Use platforms that have data-activating integrations (AdRoll ABM and its many integrations might be a good choice 😉).
The intent layer: Integrate a third-party intent data provider. This allows you to see which accounts are visiting your competitors' sites before they ever reach yours.
Privacy and compliance: With stricter data laws, ensure your tracking pixels and cookies are privacy-first. Ensure your attribution data is accurate with whichever privacy-first platform you choose.
Interested in learning more about how to make use of last year’s data for this year’s marketing plan?]
Sales-marketing alignment
The most common point of failure is the silo between sales and marketing. January should be dedicated to a reset to get both teams on the same page:
Unified ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): Does Sales agree on who the target is? Use H1 to refine your ICP based on high–customer lifetime value accounts from the previous year. Pro tip: Use ICP Fit Grade in AdRoll ABM to understand your ideal customer profile, based off machine learning and your current customer profile.
Service level agreement: Define exactly how fast Sales must follow up on a high intent signal and be sure to give them the right dashboards to do so. In 2026, a 10-minute delay can cost a deal.
This is a time to ensure marketing and sales goals fuel each other. Are your KPIs traceable to larger business goals? January is the Month of the Alignment Meeting.
February: Content Strategy and Deep Personalization
Generic content is dead — thanks, AI! Your value now lies in contextual relevance. Here are some strategies to make your campaigns personalized while you take the month of February to build out long-term goals for content and bake personalization into campaigns.
1. The pillar-and-cluster model
Build one pillar page of 3,000+ words that covers a broad topic (e.g., The Future of Supply Chain Automation). Then, link 5–10 cluster articles to it. This signals to search engines that you are a topical authority.
If you need more tips on refining content for the new year, we have a whole guide on building a winning B2B content strategy.
2. Personalization at scale
Personalization in 2026 goes beyond "Hello [First_Name]": 71% of users expect highly personal interactions with brands. These are some examples of how you can elevate marketing from personalized to hyper-personalized:
Dynamic website content: Use tools like Mutiny or Adobe Target to change your homepage headline based on the visitor's industry or company size.
Tailored value propositions: If a visitor comes from a fintech company, your site should highlight security and compliance. If they are from manufacturing, it should highlight efficiency and scale.
Tailored ads: Use ads that speak exactly to your users’ pain points. Target by industry, account, persona, and more. You can even get hyper-specific and target employees at a particular company. Pro tip: Leverage personalized advertising (1:1) through AdRoll ABM where you can customize ads to the user based on specific company or contact attributes, such as company name or job title.
March & April: Precision ABM and Advertising Scaling
ABM 2.0
By March, your brand awareness efforts from January should be fueling your demand gen. ABM is the backbone of modern B2B marketing, and if you aren’t already using it, here’s a preview of its three tiers to help you hyper-personalize by account:
Strategic ABM (1:1): Dedicated campaigns for your top 10 must-win accounts. Think custom landing pages and direct-mail gifts. This is as personalized as it gets.
ABM lite (1:few): Targeting clusters of accounts with similar pain points (for example, healthcare C-suite living in a particular region of the US).
Programmatic ABM (1:many): Using intent data to serve targeted display ads to thousands of relevant stakeholders within your target accounts.
We have a comprehensive guide to determine if ABM is right for you (and it probably is right for you). Take a look!
Precision advertising tactics
Now that you know your audience and have your target accounts, what’s the best way to reach them with paid ads? These are a few precision ad strategies that can work toward your KPIs:
Channel | H1 Strategy |
LinkedIn thought leadership ads | Experiment with promoting posts from your CEO or SMEs rather than the company page. Use SMEs that speak to the target audience of your ads. |
Display retargeting | Reach website visitors with educational content — or, high-intent visitors with BOFU content like case studies or demos. |
Use B2B targeting on streaming platforms to reach decision-makers in their living rooms. CTV is a high attention brand awareness play. | |
Paid Search (SEM) | Move away from broad keywords related to your industry as a whole. To be more precise, focus on comparison and “alternative to” keywords. |
May: Optimize and Reduce Friction
In May, analyze where your H1 leads are dropping off in your previous efforts.This is where you need to work cross-functionally to map the customer journey to identify points where customers bounce. Here’s a few ideas that keep buyers in the funnel:
Self-serve demos: Buyers have completed 70% of the decision-making journey before ever contacting sales. Offer an interactive demo sans sales call.
Chatbot-to-human handoff: Make it so your users don’t have to reach a human to book a demo. Let your chatbot flag high intent users and conversations to your sales team.
A/B testing: Test your friction points. These could be anything from a new CTA to an ungated resource.
June: Reporting and prep for H2
As you wrap up H1, use this time to set up H2.
Marketing reports fail because they focus on vanity metrics such as likes and impressions. For more budget and better marketing campaigns, you have to improve your pipeline contribution.
Are we appearing in the channels and in the ways we set out to appear in H1?
How fast are leads moving from the first touchpoint to a closed deal?
Is our data accurate? (Clean MarTech comes in handy here!)
You need to have the right measurement tools, attribution modeling, and reporting from the get-go. If you’re early in H1, there’s still time to set the right standards, like choosing the best attribution model for your business.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How does ABM impact H1 revenue?
ABM shortens sales cycles by focusing resources on accounts already showing intent to buy. While the lead volume may be lower, the Average Contract Value (ACV) and thus quality, is typically 30-50% higher.
Why is a clean MarTech stack important for AI?
AI tools require structured, clean data to function. If your CRM data is messy, your AI-driven lead scoring and personalization will be inaccurate, leading to wasted ad spend and annoyed prospects. Invest in the resources and people to clean things up regularly.
What is GEO?
GEO is generative engine optimization. A subcategory of search engine optimization, GEO involves optimizing marketing materials for generative search engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
How can you use intent data in 2026?
To succeed with intent data, integrate first-party signals (like website behaviors and CRM history) with third-party surges (like competitor research and industry content consumption) to create a hot list of accounts ranked by purchase probability.
The most effective strategy now involves automated spike plays, where a sudden surge in intent from multiple stakeholders at a target account triggers an immediate, multi-channel response — such as AI-personalized LinkedIn ads, tailored content hubs, and high-priority sales notifications.
What is the zero-click content trend?
It refers to users getting the information they need directly on the search results page or via an AI summary without clicking a link. Marketers must optimize for "snippets" and "citations" to maintain brand presence in this environment.
Final Thoughts: Building Your H1 Engine
No marketing plan will be perfect from its inception. You’ll need monthly pivots based on market signals and a thousand tiny adjustments.
The best you can do is prioritize a clean technical foundation, hyper-personalized ABM, and AI-ready content, so you aren't just surviving the first half of the year. With a strong foundation, you're building a moat that competitors can't cross.
Last updated on January 26th, 2026.