The New Currency
Twenty-four years across digital media leadership. VP Marketing Solutions for Large Customers International at LinkedIn, on why trust and credibility are the new currency in B2B, how 95% of B2B buyers are now using LLMs to make purchasing decisions, and why AI-ready teams beat AI-led teams.
“Trust and credibility is the new currency in B2B.”
Milka Privodanova is VP Marketing Solutions, Large Customers International at LinkedIn. Twenty-four years across digital media leadership starting at Telelink in Bulgaria, through eleven and a half years at Microsoft (Prague, Western Europe, Bing UK), five years at Pinterest leading EMEA, and now LinkedIn since October 2025. Media Leader of the Year, Media Owner, twenty months into her Pinterest country manager role.
Milka grew up in Bulgaria. From July 2001 she spent six and a half years as Associate to the Chairman at Telelink, alongside a year in 2007 as Publisher of Ego Magazine in Sofia, where (in her telling) advertising revenue doubled within three months and the magazine won Magazine of the Year in 2008. She went to business school in 2008 and explored real estate, private equity, and a class called “Managing Media Companies” that she fell for. Her business school case study: how to monetise Facebook in 2008. Microsoft hired her out of business school.
From January 2009 to November 2011 Milka was Business Development and Business Operations Lead for Microsoft CEE, based in Prague, managing Windows Consumer, Windows Phone and Online businesses across twenty-four countries, doubling CEE online revenue in two years through partnership deals in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia. In November 2011 she moved to London as Bing Product Marketing Manager for Western Europe, then in March 2012 became Bing and Bing Ads Evangelist for Western Europe, where she played a key role in growing search revenues 400% in three years and addressed more than 5,000 decision makers across 18 months. In June 2015 she was promoted to Sales Director Bing UK, where she led the transition of strategic clients from Yahoo to Microsoft and built annual revenues past $230m. Shortlisted for Manager of the Year in 2018 and 2019.
In June 2020 Milka joined Pinterest as Country Manager UK, NL and Nordics, and won Media Leader of the Year (Media Owner) twenty months in. In October 2022 she was promoted to VP Head of EMEA at Pinterest for three years, sitting on the Council of the Advertising Association. In October 2025 she joined LinkedIn as VP Marketing Solutions, Large Customers International, working with the world’s largest B2B audience: 1.3 billion members, 70 million companies, and a platform that recent Profound research identified as the number one source for LLMs answering professional queries.
“AI-ready teams. Not AI-led teams.”
“B2B is moving from brand-led messaging to ecosystem credibility. People want to hear from people, much less than logos.”
B2B buyers face high-risk, hard-to-reverse decisions, and they need to be able to defend those decisions internally. That makes lowering perceived risk one of the most underrated jobs in marketing. The route to lowering it is trusted, credible voices: anyone in the company with a point of view can be a source. The demographic has moved: 70% of B2B buyers are now Gen Z or Millennials, and the format they engage with most is video. The B2B buyer journey is 211 days, with more than 20 people involved, and 95% of buyers are not in market at any given time. Brands that get chosen are known to 80% of the buying group on day one.
“95% of B2B buyers are using LLMs to make purchasing decisions. Being viable means being known and trusted.”
LLMs are the new gatekeeper of B2B consideration. Profound’s recent research identified LinkedIn as the number one source for LLMs answering professional queries, because the platform carries real people having real conversations. LLMs favour expert reviews, original content (95% of the content they surface is original; 5% is re-shared), and structured information. Brands that want to be considered have to be present in the LLM’s sources, with original, expert-led, structured content. Otherwise they are not discovered, and they are not on the shortlist.
“Find where AI does the heavy lifting. Humans still steer the story.”
The teams that succeed will be AI-ready, not AI-led. AI handles the heavy lifting; humans hold the curation, tone of voice, judgement, creativity. 60 to 70% of an ad’s effectiveness sits in the creative, and visual storytelling is now the fastest-growing marketing skill in the UK. Milka’s personal leadership rule, learned through twenty-four years across Telelink, Microsoft, Pinterest and LinkedIn: be willing to learn and be willing to unlearn. The best leaders create clarity, generate energy, and deliver results. Empathy is not the opposite of strength; the best business leaders are empathetic.
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