The Complete Guide to LinkedIn Ads in 2024

Sponsored Content, also known as native ads, shows up in your audiences’ LinkedIn feed, regardless of whether they’re scrolling on mobile or their desktop. LinkedIn labels these ads as “promoted” to distinguish them from regular content.

When advertising with Sponsored Content, you have the following ad format options:

• Single image ads
• Video ads
• Carousel ads
• Event ads
• Document ads
• Thought leader ads

Here’s an example of a single-image document ad as it appears in the desktop feed:

LinkedIn uses objective-based advertising, which helps advertisers build ad campaigns around specific business goals.

Want to get your name out there without necessarily making a direct sale? Start with a brand awareness ad to get your brand on the tip of people’s tongues. These top-of-funnel campaigns help get audiences talking about your products, services and brand.

You can also use these impression-based campaigns to gain more followers, increase views, and spark greater engagement.

Most of LinkedIn’s available ad formats can successfully generate awareness, but the types that are best to use if you want to achieve this objective are:

• Single image ads
• Carousel ads
• Follower ads
• Event ads
• Spotlight ads

If your audience is already somewhat familiar with your brand, opt for a consideration ad.

Consideration ads are optimized to help advertisers meet the following goals:

• Website visits. Get more eyeballs on your website and landing pages.
• Engagement. Encourage likes, comments and shares, as well as visits to other social media platforms and websites.
• Video views. Share your business story, your latest product, or a day-in-the-life via video.
• Messaging. Want to engage with your audience? Get in their inbox with direct messages.

To nurture these mid-funnel leads, consider using the following LinkedIn ad formats:

• Video ads
• Carousel ads
• Conversation ads
• Text ads

If your audience is already familiar with your brand and ready to make a decision, it’s time to pull out the big guns. When you want to generate leads, drive home a sale, or reach job applicants, consider a conversion ad.

They can help meet these three objectives:

Although it may be the most straightforward way to share an advertising message with an audience, don’t underestimate the power of an image.

A campaign with strong visuals can increase brand awareness and entice your audience to follow through on your call to action.

Image Dimensions: 1200 x 627 pixels (recommended)
File Size: 5 MB
File Type: .jpg, .png., .gif
Text Limit: 150 characters recommended for the intro (but can go up to 600), 70 characters for the headline (max of 200)
Aspect Ratio: 1.91:1

Carousel ads can showcase multiple offerings or tell a sequential story. This format increases user interaction, thanks to its swipeable content, which drives higher engagement rates.

There’s no better way to get up close and personal with your target audience than to slide into their DMs. Conversation ads are both intimate and tough for the recipient to ignore.

Subject Text: Up to 60 characters
Optional Banner Size: 300 x 250 pixels, 2 MB max
Intro Message: Up to 8,000 characters; max of 10 emojis
Optional Image: 250 x 250; 5 MB
CTA Button Limits: Up to 25 characters; 5 buttons per message; 50 buttons per convo

Share documents in the feed to collect leads or drive engagement. (Or both, if you’ve got something really amazing to share.)

File type: PDF, .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx
File size: 100 MB
Number of pages: Under 10 pages recommended
Ad text: 70 characters for headline, 150 for introductory text

Whether it’s an in-person event or a virtual town hall, inviting people to RSVP or buy tickets directly with an Events Ad is a practical idea that can help you improve reach and eliminate registration friction.

To make an event ad on LinkedIn, you must first create a LinkedIn event on your page.

Follower ads are a type of dynamic ad personalized to your audience. These ads promote your LinkedIn Page to others to encourage them to hit that follow button.

Lead gen forms, short for lead generation forms, are available for message ads and sponsored content. These ads can help you discover more qualified leads.

Spotlight ads highlight your products, services, content and more. When members click a spotlight ad, they’re immediately directed to your landing page or website.

Single job ads promote opportunities directly in your audience’s newsfeeds. If you’ve been struggling to find that perfect candidate or always seem to be in hiring mode, these ads are the way to go.

This is more of a boosted post than an ad, so there are no specs to share here.

You’ll just need to promote an existing thought leadership post from someone in your organization… no call-to-action buttons or headlines are required.

Source: LinkedIn

Ad format: A thought leader ad must be a single image ad or video ad

Headline: You cannot add a headline (the ad is based on the original post)

Introductory text: You cannot add text (the ad is based on the original post)

CTA: There are no call-to-action buttons on a thought leader ad

By now, you must be chomping at the bit to get your LinkedIn ads up and running. But you’ve got one last decision to make: do you set up your ad campaign via LinkedIn or use Hootsuite?

We’ll break down both options for you.

Open the campaign manager

There’s a little icon in the top right corner of the screen that says Advertise.

Click that to open the campaign manager, then click the blue Create button to start a new advertising account.

Update the name and currency, then connect it to your LinkedIn Company Page to unlock all available ad formats. (Note that you need to be a Page Admin to advertise on behalf of a Page.)

Click the blue Create button to open up the campaign objective menu.

Choose an option under Awareness (brand awareness), Consideration (website visits, engagement, video views, messaging) or Conversion (lead generation, website conversions or job applicants).

Give your campaign a group name, and define how and when you plan to spend across your campaigns.

Toggle on the budget optimization to have your group budget automatically distributed for better ROI. Click the Next button at the bottom when you’re ready.

In the Audience menu here, tweak your target audience with details like location, profile language, job title, industry or skill. You can add attributes you want, and exclude attributes you don’t.

Not sure where to start? Choose one of LinkedIn’s set audiences via the drop-down menu. A right-hand sidebar will give you details about what kind of performance you can expect from your custom choices.

At the bottom of the menu, you can save this audience for later or reset all the settings to start fresh.

LinkedIn will give you a whole menu of choices for how your ad can look. This list of options will be different depending on your campaign objective.

For brand awareness, for instance, we can pick between a single image, carousel, video, text, spotlight, follower, document, conversation or event.

Scroll down and you’ll see the instructions for adding URL tracking parameters.

Below that, you’ll have the option to expand the placement of your ad from just LinkedIn to trusted third-party publishers.

Continue scrolling down to review your campaign budget and schedule.

Choose to set a daily budget or lifetime budget (or both) and schedule your ad to either run continuously, or between two specific dates. You can also tweak your optimization goal and bidding strategy.

With a conversion tracker, you can measure the actions of people who visit your website after clicking or viewing your ad on LinkedIn.

Select Create new conversion and follow the instructions to apply a tracker to your website. Click the Next button at the bottom of the page.

Now that you’ve decided who is going to see your ad (and when, and for how long), it’s time to actually build something for them to see. Select Create new ads and then get creative.

Give your ad a title, add some introductory text, add a destination URL and upload an image. You’ll also be able to add a headline and a call-to-action button to really reel ‘em in.

When you’re happy with your creative, click the Save Ad button in the bottom right-hand corner.

At this stage, you’ll be invited to add more advertisements to your LinkedIn campaign. To do so, hit the Create New Ads link at the top.

If you’re happy with launching just one solo masterpiece into the world, you’re almost done!

You’ve got one last opportunity to review your decisions before you send that beautiful baby ad out into the world.

This is also where you’ll input your billing info, including your business contact info and credit card details.

When you’re all good to go, hit the Agree & launch campaign button in the bottom right and get this party started.

If you’re already creating, scheduling, and analyzing the rest of your social media content using Hootsuite, why not use Hootsuite to run your social ad campaigns as well?

Follow the prompts in the menu to select the right LinkedIn Page and ad account, affiliate the campaign with a campaign group if you need to, and name your campaign.

You’ll also be asked to select a campaign objective. Choose between Traffic, Awareness, Engagement, Leads, and Conversions.

Then, click the Next button.

Tap Edit your audience to narrow down who should see your ad on LinkedIn. Customize your audience by selecting the languages, locations, demographics and interests.

Tick a box if you want to show your ads beyond LinkedIn to the rest of the LinkedIn Audience Network. Then, pick your ad format: image or video?

Now, scroll down to…

How much do you want to spend on this ad? How long is it going to run? Set a daily, lifetime or daily-and-lifetime budget and your maximum daily spend.

Select the date your campaign will start and end, and then hit the Next: Create ad button.

This is the fun part!

Upload your image or video and fill in the blanks here with your best caption, headline and call-to-action button.

You’ve put a lot of work into your LinkedIn ad campaign — let’s make sure this thing doesn’t flop!

These are the criteria LinkedIn says are vital to crafting a successful ad campaign on the platform.

On LinkedIn, defining where in the world you want your ads to be seen is mandatory. Your desired location is actually the only field that’s mandatory when setting up your ad campaign. You can go broad by only designating the country, state or province, or you can go granular and target audiences by city or metropolitan area.

You can further refine your target audience with company details (e.g., industry or company size), demographics, education, job experience and interests.

One word of caution: Like other advertising platforms, LinkedIn advises against getting over-specific with ad targeting. If you’re new to LinkedIn ads, you might want to try casting a wider net initially and sticking to three targeting facets.

You can also A/B test campaigns with different targeting criteria, such as skills versus job titles, to learn which audiences connect better with your brand.

Your audience is busy. For their sake (and yours), make sure it’s easy for them to figure out what they should do next.

LinkedIn ads should have a concise headline, descriptive copy, and end with a clear CTA, often in the form of a text button.

Just make sure that your CTA matches the objective you initially selected. Some effective CTAs include “Register Now” or “Sign Up Today!”

LinkedIn can boost your content so it finds the right audience, but that won’t keep people glued to the screen. If you really want to connect, your ad needs to stand out.

Try the techniques below to keep audiences hanging onto every word you say.

Sponsored Content:

• Repurpose content from your blog, website and social media channels.
• Include 4-5 ads in each campaign
• Use video, audio or other rich media elements.
• Develop an emotional connection by sharing human interest stories.
• Do more than just share trending news. Add your insights into the mix to show off your brand’s thought leadership.

Sponsored Messaging:

• If encouraging brand consideration, share blog posts, webinars, or industry trends and analysis.
• When developing leads and trying to convert customers, promote product demos, tutorials and success stories or advertise an upcoming webinar or event.

Text Ads:

• Despite the name of these ads, don’t skip the visuals. Images may be optional but they land better results.
• Instead of including an object or logo, opt for a profile image when possible.

Video Ads:

The cost to put an ad on LinkedIn varies. LinkedIn uses an online auction system that allows you to place competitive bids for your ads to win placement.

Running ads on LinkedIn is worth it if you want to reach an engaged audience of business professionals. LinkedIn ads are a smart way to promote a job listing, company page, online event like a webinar, or a lead generation document like a whitepaper.

The different ad options for LinkedIn include the following formats:

• Single image ads
• Carousel ads
• Conversation ads
• Document ads
• Video ads
• Event ads
• Follower ads
• Lead gen forms
• Spotlight ads
• Single job ads

LinkedIn recommends $25 for the minimum spend for new advertisers and anywhere from $50-$100 for existing advertisers.

Easily manage your LinkedIn Page ads — along with the rest of your paid and organic social content — using Hootsuite. Schedule and share posts, engage your audience, boost top-performing content, and analyze your performance.