Brittney Bentley, a product marketing manager at LinkedIn, wrote the sentence “LinkedIn data shows that” on the blog and put three lines beneath it. According to the first line, 82% of B2B marketers agree that working with creators increases trust among decision-makers. The other two lines are about buyers. LinkedIn had already given a similar figure in June, under the heading of a survey that only marketers filled in.
According to the second and third lines, 63% of B2B buyers rely on creators when looking for information at the start of a purchase. More than half turn to them later, when verifying a decision. On the same day, 28 September 2026, LinkedIn introduced the Creator Discovery beta for B2B influencer marketing. In it, brands choose creators by industry, job function, content type, audience demographics or Top Voices status. LinkedIn expects to move it out of beta into general use in early 2027. Both MediaPost and Social Media Today reproduced the second line. Social Media Today added only “per LinkedIn” to it.
LinkedIn launched its creator marketplace, Creator Marketplace, as early as June 2026 and justified it with a survey. The marketplace is meant to offer brands creator search, insights about creators and collaboration tools in one place. The announcement says that, according to 77% of B2B marketers, a buyer must trust and know a brand before they start dealing with it. Right after that LinkedIn writes “That's why we're introducing Creator Marketplace and BrandWorks”. Further on in the announcement there is the subheading “Why is LinkedIn Continuing to Invest in Creators?”, and beneath it LinkedIn answers with a figure from the survey of marketers.
A survey of marketers also carries a figure about buyers
In the June announcement, LinkedIn states that 56% of B2B buyers rely on creators at the end of a purchase when verifying a recommendation. It placed the figure under the heading of a survey of 1,299 B2B marketers. The 2026 Global B2B Marketing Outlook survey for LinkedIn was conducted by YouGov online in January and February this year and asked marketers at middle and senior management level. It covered the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the USA and India. The Czech Republic is not among them. The announcement does not say whether LinkedIn obtained the figure about buyers from a different study.
PPC Land and Net Influencer presented the figure about buyers in June as a survey result. So a survey in which buyers did not respond is speaking about buyer behaviour.
LinkedIn justified the creator marketplace with marketers' opinion
LinkedIn placed the marketplace in its advertising tool Campaign Manager. PPC Land listed among the main reasons for the marketplace another June figure, the one about trust among decision-makers. It appears with the same number and almost the same wording on the first line of Brittney Bentley's September blog post.
In its September guide to the marketplace for brands, the agency SociallyIn acknowledges that LinkedIn's own research “makes a strong case”, and advises reading it as LinkedIn's argument. According to the agency, LinkedIn commissioned the research itself and nobody has verified it independently.
If a Czech marketer wants to defend this year's budget for creators or for Thought Leader Ads on the grounds of buyer trust, what they hold from LinkedIn is mainly the first line from the September blog post, that is, the opinion of marketers. They have to measure the trust of their own customers themselves. As of September, access to the marketplace was still limited to the USA and Canada. A date for the European Union was not confirmed at the time. According to LinkedIn's help pages, content from Czech creators cannot yet be searched for or sponsored there because of the DMA.
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