Who LinkedIn ads fit
LinkedIn's work targeting is built largely on what members and companies enter themselves: job titles come mainly from members, and a company's industry is the one the company states. That makes LinkedIn a strong fit when your buyer is defined by role or company, such as software and services sold to businesses, B2B events, recruiting and offers that need a decision-maker. It adds less when your customers aren't defined by their job, because the work options then have little to work with.
Before you start: ad account and LinkedIn Page
- Campaign Manager is LinkedIn's self-service tool for creating, launching and measuring campaigns. The first step is to create an ad account.
- You must associate a LinkedIn Page with the ad account to create ads or use all features. If you don't have a Page yet, you can create one during setup.
- The account's currency and its Page can't be changed after the account is created. To advertise for a different Page, you need a new ad account.
- Whoever creates the account becomes its account manager and billing admin, and can add colleagues or partners.
- To create Sponsored Content, Dynamic Ads or Lead Gen Forms, you also need the right permissions on the Page.
Campaign objectives
You choose an objective when you create a campaign or ad set, and each objective comes with its own ad formats and bidding strategies. The objective and ad format can't be changed after the ad set launches, so choose them carefully.
| Tier | Objective | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| Brand awareness | Brand awareness | Tell more people about your products, services or organization |
| Consideration | Website visits | Drive traffic to your website or landing pages |
| Consideration | Engagement | Get more likes, comments, shares, clicks and Page follows |
| Consideration | Video views | Share your videos with more people |
| Conversions | Lead generation | Collect leads with a form pre-filled from LinkedIn profiles |
| Conversions | Website conversions | Capture leads and other actions you define on your website |
| Conversions | Job applicants | Promote job openings and drive applicants |
| Conversions | Talent leads | Find interested candidates; needs an active LinkedIn Recruiter contract |
Main ad formats
Which formats you can pick depends on the objective; the video views objective, for example, offers only video ads. These are the formats you will meet most often:
- Single image, carousel and video ads: native ads in the LinkedIn feed, shown on desktop, tablet and mobile.
- Document ads: promote a document directly in the feed.
- Thought leader ads: promote posts from executives, subject matter experts or employees in the feed.
- Message ads: a one-to-one message in a prospect's LinkedIn inbox.
- Conversation ads: one interactive message with content paths people choose.
- Spotlight ads: personalised ads on the right rail that show the member's own photo, job title and company.
- Also available for some objectives: event, text, follower, job, and article and newsletter ads.
Single image, carousel, document and video ad sets can also use the LinkedIn Audience Network, which delivers the same ads on trusted third-party apps and sites. You can't run an ad set only outside LinkedIn.
Targeting options
Location is the only required choice: you can reach people by where they live, or where they live and visit. On top of it you can add the attributes below, your own Matched Audiences and predictive audiences. An ad set needs an audience of at least 300 member accounts.
| Option | What it targets |
|---|---|
| Job title | The member's position in their organization |
| Job function | Common tasks and activities of a job position |
| Job seniority | The rank or level of influence of the member's current role |
| Member skills | Relevant keywords in the member's profile and skills section |
| Company industry | The primary industry of the member's employer, as stated by the company |
| Company size | The estimated size of the organization |
| Company name | The organization the member lists as their employer |
| Matched Audiences | Custom audience segments you create and use as targeting |
| Predictive audiences | People predicted to act like the people in your source data |
Budget and bidding
- Budgets can sit at campaign level, to share spend across ad sets, or at ad set level for tighter control.
- A daily budget is the average you want to spend per day. Spend can be up to 100% higher on a given day, but not more than seven times the daily budget in a week.
- A lifetime budget is the total for the ad set's whole schedule, and you need one to set a custom schedule.
- Maximum delivery (automated) bids for you to spend the whole budget on the most key results. It is charged by impressions and has no bid or cost cap.
- Cost cap also charges by impressions; the cost per key result you set is an average LinkedIn tries to stay under.
- Manual bidding lets you set the bid. Depending on objective, format and optimization goal, you are charged per impression, landing page click, engagement click, send or video view.
Lead Gen Forms
With the lead generation objective, people who click your ad see a form pre-filled with their LinkedIn profile data. Lead Gen Forms cost nothing beyond the ad set itself. You can download leads as a CSV file or sync them to a CRM or marketing automation platform, and you must provide a valid privacy policy link.
Measuring results
The LinkedIn Insight Tag is a piece of JavaScript code on your website that tracks visits driven by LinkedIn ads. Insight Tag conversions track actions on your site, and they can only be verified and reported once the tag is installed. The Conversions API sends online and offline conversions from your own server, and LinkedIn counts an event only once when it arrives through both. LinkedIn also says the tag shouldn't be installed on pages that collect sensitive data.
Ad review and common rejection reasons
Ads don't run until LinkedIn approves them, and review usually takes up to 24 hours. If an ad is rejected, Campaign Manager and an email show the reason; editing the ad resubmits it, or you can appeal. LinkedIn recommends setting up ad sets at least 48 hours before their start date. Its Advertising Policies include these rules:
- No fraud or deception: the ad must match your product, and claims need factual support. An advertised price or discount must be easy to find from the ad's link.
- Link behaviour: the display URL's domain must match the destination URL, and the landing page can't open pop-ups or block the Back button.
- Standard text: no incorrect spelling, grammar or punctuation, excessive emojis or capitalization, or unrelated hashtags.
- Incomplete ads are rejected, and the language must suit a professional audience.
- Prohibited content includes political ads, gambling and sweepstakes, tobacco, weapons and adult content.
- Restricted categories, such as financial services, cryptocurrency, alcohol and dating, come with extra rules.
Setting up LinkedIn ads with Mecrio
- Mecrio creates the campaign, the ad set and the ad in your own LinkedIn ad account, with single image, video or carousel ads.
- The ad set and the ad are created as drafts, so nothing runs or spends until you start them.
- Feed ads run under the LinkedIn Page you choose on Mecrio's Connections page.
- Before anything is created, Mecrio stops a lead campaign that has no LinkedIn form, and a pay-per-click or pay-per-view ad set that has no bid amount. It also flags LinkedIn Audience Network on a lead campaign before publishing.
- Ad spend goes from your own ad account directly to LinkedIn, and Mecrio takes no cut of it. Live campaigns can be edited field by field where LinkedIn allows it.