“AI powers the engine, and humans steer the story in marketing”: Linkedin’s Jessica Jensen

LinkedIn’s chief marketing and strategy officer, Jessica Jensen, has built her leadership philosophy around one core principle — curiosity. She likens it to a kaleidoscope that shifts patterns with every turn, arguing that in today’s volatile business environment, leaders must do the same: adapt, question, and reimagine what success looks like. “Leadership isn’t about having all the answers,” she tells Campaign India. “It’s about reinventing success, remaining resilient as patterns change, embracing humour, and making work both meaningful and enjoyable.”

At a time when technology, talent, and tools are evolving faster than ever, Jensen believes curiosity is not a soft skill but a strategic imperative. As she prepares to kick off B2Believe, LinkedIn’s flagship B2B marketing event in Bengaluru, she underscores how AI-led transformation is redefining marketing; from impression-based metrics to impact-led storytelling. Under her mandate, LinkedIn’s global marketing, brand, and corporate strategy teams are steering this shift, positioning the platform as a growth partner for B2B marketers worldwide.

Jensen’s career spans leadership roles across some of the world’s most recognised tech and digital brands—Indeed, OpenTable, Kayak, Meta, Apple, and Yahoo!. In an exclusive conversation with Campaign India, she explores how businesses can reach the right audiences, engage meaningfully, and measure results more effectively. She also offers a preview of ‘What Events Made Easy’, LinkedIn’s latest tool designed to simplify campaign execution and demonstrate ROI, signalling how curiosity and innovation continue to shape the next chapter of B2B marketing.

Here are edited excerpts of the interview:

Starting as a professional networking site, Linkedin has become a hub for creators, B2B storytelling, and advertising. What is its total user base globally, in APAC and India, respectively, and how have these numbers grown year-on-year, in the past three years?

It’s been incredible to see how our vision of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce continues to manifest in new ways as the future of work unfolds. LinkedIn is where professionals come to find jobs, learn new skills, and build meaningful connections and where businesses connect with buyers, amplify their brands, and drive growth. 

Globally, we’ve seen the total number of creators on LinkedIn nearly double from 2021 to 2025, signalling how they are turning to the platform to share their insights, connect with professionals, and ultimately grow their networks and business. 

In APAC alone, we now have 355 million members growing 13% year-over-year, with India leading the charge as one of our fastest-growing markets with 160 million members and counting, up more than 20% year-over-year.  

How do you define LinkedIn’s evolving identity today—as a professional network, a B2B media ecosystem, or something entirely new? 

​​LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network; we represent 1.3 billion members, 70 million companies, 141,000 schools, in 36 languages. Our focus is on creating a safe and trusted platform that helps professionals find the right expertise, relationships, and opportunities to grow their career or business.

We’re investing majorly in products that build trust, fuel opportunity and drive engagement; like verifications, AI-powered job search and video. And it’s paying off.

Nearly 100 million members have verified their identity on LinkedIn, helping professionals have the confidence they’re engaging with or recruiting real people. More than 1.3 million members used our new AI-powered job search to discover new roles with more than 7.6 million searches per week in India, and are seeing a 60% improvement in the quality of results. We’ve also seen three straight quarters of double-digit growth in video uploads with a 24% increase in comments on LinkedIn. 

That’s more trusted connections and knowledge-sharing than ever before, greater access to opportunity, and deeper engagement. The momentum is undeniable, and we’re just getting started.

India is now LinkedIn’s second-largest market and a key base for SMBs and global capability centres (GCC). What distinct behavioural or business trends are you observing among Indian professionals and brands that set this market apart from others?

India is one of LinkedIn’s most dynamic markets, driven by a young, ambitious workforce and rapid digital adoption. Professionals here love to learn, especially in AI; they are using AI skills 3x more frequently than the global average. India is also a mobile-first, video-first market where video consumption on LinkedIn has grown over 50% year-on-year.

In terms of business trends, the country remains the fastest-growing major economy, driven by investments in digital services, manufacturing, financial services, insurance, and GCCs. At the same time, its thriving ecosystem of 63 million small businesses across urban and rural economies contributes 30% to India’s GDP, signalling a population rooted in entrepreneurship.

SMBs are leaning into performance-driven marketing and formats that allow them to reach targeted audiences with their insights and business promotion. Indian recruiters value speed and transparency, inspiring new features on LinkedIn, like Salary and Notice Period filters, which are built for India, from India.

AI-driven platforms promise precision and speed, but often at the cost of originality. How is LinkedIn balancing automation with authenticity to ensure that B2B marketing remains insightful rather than purely data-led?

Marketing is a critical growth engine for every company, and we know that AI enhances it through data-driven insights, personalised experiences, and precision targeting. However, the real magic of marketing—the human insight, empathy, context and creativity—remains core to every effective campaign. 

AI has helped to power the LinkedIn platform for years, helping customers create campaigns with Accelerate and refine targeting with Predictive Audiences. Marketers, therefore, have the oversight to ensure the brand voice, creative vision and strategic intent of the campaign meet their objectives. I think of AI as powering the engine, and humans steering the story in marketing. 

LinkedIn has rolled out new solutions—from BrandLink to Thought Leader Ads—to prove marketing impact. How are you quantifying effectiveness in a B2B context where influence and credibility often matter more than clicks?

We’re focused on helping B2B marketers bridge the gap between activity and impact, and our advertising solutions are designed to do just that. BrandLink, a video ad solution that allows brands to run ads against trusted publisher and creator voices, is one example of how we are bridging this gap. US software company ServiceNow is leveraging it against publishers like Bloomberg, and is seeing a 30% increase in likelihood to complete a lead gen form.

Atlassian also used LinkedIn’s solution to connect the dots between activity and impact. To reintroduce its core product, Confluence, the software company launched a full-funnel brand campaign using LinkedIn Sponsored Content, Thought Leader Ads, and, for the first time, LinkedIn’s CTV Ads. With support from Kantar, the campaign drove double-digit lifts in brand metrics and they reported a 120% increase in lower funnel engagement while running with CTV.

The pressure on marketers is not going to go away, if anything, we’ll see it continue to increase. Giving B2B marketers solutions that squarely focus on driving business outcomes is our priority.

With ad revenue sharing now extended to creators, LinkedIn seems to be blurring the line between professional influence and creator marketing. What does this shift mean for brand storytelling and for agencies designing B2B influencer strategies?

Our recent research shows that 53% of B2B buyers identify potential solutions through creator content and 39% of them say that creator content helps reduce the perceived risk involved in purchase decisions. B2B buyers turn to creators to help inform their purchase decisions and the majority (59%) are consuming that content on LinkedIn, more than on any other social platform.

We’re focused on helping business leaders, founders, subject matter experts and creators share their ideas, spark conversations and build their brands on LinkedIn. Through initiatives like BrandLink, brands can align with content from creators and publishers they trust based on core themes our members care about. 

For marketers, working with creators to extend the reach of their messages isn’t a fleeting trend, it’s a scalable way for them to amplify their content strategy by reaching and engaging the right audience. 

India’s influencer marketing space is under growing scrutiny, especially with ASCI’s guidelines around disclosure and transparency. How is LinkedIn ensuring that creator-led campaigns remain credible, compliant, and true to the platform’s professional ethos?

Trust and transparency are non-negotiable on LinkedIn. Our guidelines require creators and advertisers to clearly disclose branded content using tags like #ad or #sponsored. Our community policies are designed to uphold credibility and brand safety. We also work closely with creators and partners to educate them on compliance and responsible content, thereby ensuring that all creator-led campaigns remain authentic, relevant, and are aligned with our professional ethos.

LinkedIn recently introduced changes to LinkedIn Events for B2B marketers. Beyond simplifying campaign logistics, how does this tool fit into your broader vision of helping marketers drive engagement and measurable pipeline outcomes?

In-person events are back! And as the world of work evolves, connecting in person and having real conversations with people is more valuable than ever. We’re seeing this play out on LinkedIn with a 24% increase quarter-over-quarter in Company Page-hosted events as brands extend their reach and impact to a broader audience. 

But we know that marketers face continued pressure to prove ROI from events, even when budgets are shrinking and costs to produce events are soaring. So, to make it easier to scale events of any size, reach the right audience, and measure impact on- or off-LinkedIn, this week we are making new updates to LinkedIn Events.

One way we’re doing this is through Event Ads, which help build excitement for an event, drive live participation, and keep the conversation going long after the event ends. And we’re seeing that marketers who use Event Ads see up to 31x more viewership signalling that the event is discovered, shared, and attended by the right audience at scale.  

As AI tools reshape marketing functions—from audience research to creative ideation—how does LinkedIn’s marketing organisation itself use AI internally, and where do you believe the human marketer still holds a decisive edge?

Well, human judgment is here to stay! We use AI in our marketing org in many ways from content creation, copy testing, image concepting, building synthetic market research on our data, building our own agents to build and deliver campaigns across LinkedIn. We are saving huge amounts of human time and unleashing more creativity within our team.  It’s very exciting. 

The ‘Instagram Brand’ era seems to be waning as D2C brands rethink their marketing channels. In that context, what role do you see LinkedIn playing in the next phase of digital commerce, especially for high-intent audiences and trust-based brand building?

We’re starting to reimagine how LinkedIn shows up in the world—bolder, more adventurous, and infused with real pizzazz. We’re beginning to step beyond what our members and customers expect and are creating experiences that captivate and connect, telling our story with clarity and confidence through our brand campaigns, member engagements, and customer events.

But one thing that remains constant is our commitment to putting our members first in every decision we make. This ensures we’re creating trusted experiences and products that can best help them connect, learn, and grow.

And this focus is helping us be the partner our members and customers need for the shift that we’re seeing from reach at any cost, to reach with credibility. LinkedIn is where you find high-intent audiences, real and trusted professional identities, and advertising formats that drive engagement, be it newsletters, video ads, and events. And with ROI being core to any marketing strategy, we provide real measurement offerings, to close the loop from brand love to business results for our customers.