LinkedIn Ad Formats: How to Choose the Best One for Your Campaign
LinkedIn has become an essential platform for B2B marketers, offering a variety of ad formats designed to reach professionals and decision-makers.
But with so many options, how do you choose the right one for your campaign?
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into LinkedIn's diverse ad formats, uncovering detailed insights and actionable best practices.
Whether you're looking to increase brand visibility, generate quality leads, or drive traffic to your website, mastering LinkedIn's ad formats can give you a competitive edge in the market.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Overview of LinkedIn Ad Formats
- Single Image Ads
- Video Ads
- Carousel Ads
- Thought Leader Ads
- Text Ads
- Conversation Ads
- Message Ads
- Spotlight Ads
- Follower Ads
- Document Ads
- Lead Gen Forms
- Connected TV Ads
- How to Choose the Right Ad Format
- How to Measure Performance of Each Ad Format
Overview of LinkedIn Ad Formats
Selecting the right ad format depends on your marketing objectives and target audience.
Let’s explore each primary LinkedIn ad format in detail, and reference this article for all ad specs:
Single Image Ads
Single Image Ads are a staple of LinkedIn advertising.
These ads feature one static image and appear directly in the LinkedIn feed, making them highly visible and engaging.
- High engagement with minimal content.
- Simple to create and easy to manage.
Pro tip: Use images and copy that resonate with your target audience. The best-performing ones often use your Ideal Customer Profile's (ICP) language or even direct words. Remember, in B2B, we are still advertising to people, not to robots! 😃
Video Ads
Video Ads are perfect for storytelling and driving engagement.
They allow you to share dynamic content that captures attention and conveys your message effectively.
- Excellent for storytelling and capturing attention.
- Engaging format that can explain complex ideas
Pro tip: Video ads excel at both brand building and showcasing testimonials. They are particularly effective for demonstrating product functionality. Make sure to add subtitles, the videos usually autoplay on mute.
Carousel Ads
Carousel Ads allow you to showcase multiple images or videos in a single ad unit, each with its link.
This format is ideal for highlighting different aspects of a product or telling a story more interactively.
- Interactive format that encourages engagement.
- Multiple visuals to showcase different products or features.
Pro tip: Carousel ads can be used for explaining the product, showcasing use cases and features, or explaining customer success stories in the feed. Ensure you have a consistent flow across all cards.
Thought Leader Ads
Thought Leader Ads are a powerful way to build brand credibility and engage your audience by leveraging the influence of key figures within your organization.
These ads allow you to sponsor posts from your company's thought leaders, positioning them—and by extension, your company—as industry experts.
- Build Credibility: Sponsoring posts from thought leaders enhances your brand's authority and trustworthiness.
- Engagement: These ads typically receive higher engagement rates as audiences are more likely to interact with content from recognized industry experts.
- Content Variety: Showcase a variety of content, from personal insights to industry analysis, that resonates with your audience.
3 tips for implementing thought leader ads:
- Authenticity: Ensure the content from thought leaders is authentic and reflects their genuine perspectives.
- Consistency: Regularly publish thought leadership content to maintain engagement and visibility.
- Interactive Content: Use content that encourages interaction, such as questions or calls to action, to drive higher engagement rates.
For more insights refer to 14 Powerful LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad Strategies Worth Testing.
Text Ads
Text Ads are simple yet effective.
They appear on the right-hand sidebar of LinkedIn and are great for driving traffic to your website or landing page.
- Cost-effective and easy to set up.
- Ideal for driving traffic to your website.
Pro tip: Text ads are very effective, allowing you to stay top of mind at a low cost in front of your target audience. Also, they always help to keep your logo in your ICP’s LinkedIn Feed.
Conversation Ads
Conversation Ads offer an interactive way to engage your audience by allowing recipients to choose their own path through multiple call-to-action buttons.
This format fosters engagement and ensures high visibility in LinkedIn Messaging inboxes.
- Highly engaging format that fosters engagement.
- High visibility in LinkedIn Messaging inboxes.
- Great for generating leads
Pro tip: Create engaging and relevant conversation flows tailored to your audience's needs and interests. The message subject can be a game changer for open rates! Also, try incentivized ads, sometimes they can work miraculously 🚀
Message Ads
Message Ads are direct messages sent to LinkedIn members’ inboxes, making them highly personal and effective for driving immediate action.
- High visibility in LinkedIn Messaging inboxes.
- Personalized and direct communication.
Pro tip: Craft personalized messages that speak directly to your target audience’s pain points and offer clear, actionable solutions. Keep the tone to the one that your target audience is using.
Spotlight Ads
Spotlight Ads are personalized ads that appear on the right-hand side of the LinkedIn feed.
These ads use the viewer's LinkedIn profile data, such as their photo, company name, and job title, to dynamically personalize the ad content.
- Lower CPM and High Ad Recall
- Personalized Ad Content
Check out LinkedIn Spotlight Ads In 2024: Are They Worth The Investment? to dive deeper into this ad format.
Pro tip: Spotlight ads are particularly effective for remarketing, allowing you to stay top of mind at a low cost in front of audiences that already know and trust your brand.
Follower Ads
Follower Ads help increase the number of followers for your LinkedIn page, promoting your company to a wider audience.
- Effective in promoting LinkedIn pages to acquire followers.
- Increases organic reach on LinkedIn.
Pro tip: Highlight the unique value your LinkedIn page offers to followers. Use eye-catching visuals and compelling copy that resonate with your target audience.
Document Ads
Document Ads allow you to share in-depth content directly within the LinkedIn feed.
You can share whitepapers, e-books, or case studies that members can view and download without leaving LinkedIn.
- Share in-depth content directly within the LinkedIn feed.
- Options to gate content with a Lead Gen Form to capture leads or share freely to build brand awareness.
Pro tip: Offer valuable content that addresses your audience's challenges or interests. Use a strong call-to-action to encourage downloads and interaction with your documents. Some say they prefer Document Ads to Carousel Ads because you can build retargeting audiences for Document ads.
Lead Gen Forms
Lead Gen Forms are a versatile tool that can be used with various ad formats to capture quality leads directly on LinkedIn. These forms are pre-filled with LinkedIn profile data, making it easy for users to submit their information.
- Captures quality leads with pre-filled forms.
- Provides a seamless user experience.
- Can be used for booking demos, downloading guides and templates, event registrations
Pro tip: Minimize the number of fields in your form to reduce friction. Use pre-filled form fields to make it easier for users to submit their information quickly. Don’t use “work mobile” or “work email” because they are usually not pre-filled.
Connected TV Ads
Connected TV Ads allow you to reach professional audiences through streaming content.
These ads appear on connected TV platforms and are ideal for reaching a hard-to-reach professional audience in a large-screen environment.
- Reach professional audiences through streaming content.
- High visibility on large screens.
For detailed ad specifications and additional tips, check out 50+ Ad Specs for The Top 10 Ad Platforms.
How to Choose the Right Ad Format
Choosing the right LinkedIn ad format is crucial for achieving your marketing goals. Here’s a guide to help you align your campaign objectives with the most effective ad formats and measure their performance.
What's Your Primary Campaign Goal?
First, identify your primary campaign goal. Are you aiming to capture demand, create demand, accelerate open cases, or brand awareness?
How to Measure Performance of Each Ad Format
Effectively measuring the performance of your ad campaigns is key to optimizing and achieving your marketing goals.
Here are the KPIs and bidding recommendations for each ad format:
By aligning your ad formats with your campaign goals and following these tips for measuring performance, you can create more effective LinkedIn ad campaigns that drive results and maximize your ROI.
You can read more about Objectives and Bid strategies here.
Hope you found this article helpful! Connect with me on LinkedIn, and reach out with any questions.
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)
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50+ Ad Specs for The Top 10 Ad Platforms
Have you ever wondered what dimensions does that ad require? 🤔
Then started searching to find the answer? (same here lol)
To save you (and ourselves) trouble, we gathered the most popular ad specs across 10 channels in one place:
- Google Display Ad Specs
- LinkedIn Ad Specs
- Twitter (X) Ad Specs
- Quora Ad Specs
- Reddit Ad Specs
- YouTube Ad Specs
- Google Discovery / Demand Gen Ad Specs
- TikTok Ad Specs
- Meta Ad Specs
⭐️ Bookmark this article and refer back to it when you need ad specs.
Google Display Ad Specs
Source: support.google.com
Browse examples at adstransparency.google.com
LinkedIn Ad Specs
Source: business.linkedin.com
Browse examples at: linkedin.com/ad-library/home
X (Twitter) Ad Specs
Source: business.twitter.com
- You can request to have video lengths increased up to 10 minutes
- Carousel can use images or videos but must be in the same aspect ratio (ex: 1:1 or 16:9)
Quora Ad Specs
Source: image ads, video ads
Reddit Ad Specs
Source: reddit.my.site.com
* Headlines will be truncated to 100 characters on mobile/mobile web for the conversation placement.
Youtube Ad Specs
Source: support.google.com
Browse examples at adstransparency.google.com
Google Discovery / Demand Gen Ad Specs
Source: support.google.com
Browse examples at adstransparency.google.com
TikTok Ad Specs
Source: ads.tiktok.com
Browse examples at library.tiktok.com/ads
Meta Ad Specs (Facebook/Instagram)
Source: business.facebook.com
Browse examples at: www.facebook.com/ads/library
Resources for Mastering B2B Advertising
Hope you found this ad specs article useful!
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
• Scale their ideas
• Level up their careers
• Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously I timed it 😂)
3 Powerful Strategies For Scaling SaaS Google Ads You Need To Know
Google Ads is a blessing and a curse.
You're blessed with intent and cursed with scale.
It’s a powerful channel for scaling pipeline for SaaS startups but low search volume is a challenge.
In this article you’re going to learn 3 powerful strategies for scaling your SaaS google ads further.
This won’t solve your limited search volume issues that's just the nature of your target keywords and B2B SaaS but these strategies will help you squeeze more performance from your account.
Let’s dive into it 👇
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Strategy #1: Broad Match Discovery
- Strategy #2: Advertising outside of English
- Strategy #3: Industry campaigns
Strategy #1: Broad Match Discovery
Before you click away I’m not talking about using broad match in the traditional sense.
Where you let Google show your ads for WHATEVER they think is relevant.
Broad match discovery is where you combine broad match keywords AND an audience.
It essentially means you’re giving Google the flexibility to show your ads for whatever they feel is relevant but within the confines of your targeted audience.
I would not recommend testing this approach unless you have:
- Strong negative keyword lists
- Proven converting phrase match keywords
- Significant conversion volume (> 15/month)
The benefit is you get to scale your top keywords safely past phrase match.
How to implement broad match discovery:
Step 1: Find proven converting phrase match keywords
Review your performance across converting phrase match keywords to identify which you’re going to prioritize testing with broad match discovery.
Don’t rely on “total conversions” make sure you’re viewing performance by keyword based on the custom metrics that matter for your business (ex: Demo, Trial, SQL, SAL, Opp, etc).
Once you’ve identified some worthwhile keywords it’s time for step 2.
Step 2: Brainstorm your targeted audiences
Google has 5 audience types you can leverage for targeting in your search campaigns.
- Your data = website visitors or contact lists
- In-market = people actively researching a given topic
- Life events = people who’ve accomplished a life milestone (ex: create a business, get married)
- Detailed demographics = industries, company sizes, education level.
- Affinity = people who are interested in a certain topic
You can use a mixture of all these different types of audiences to layer on top of your broad match discovery campaigns.
If you’re dealing with < 500 searches/month for your keywords I recommend clustering a minim of 10-15 audiences on top of your campaigns to help with delivery.
Step 3: Setup a campaign experiment
The safest way you can test broad match discovery is in a 50/50 experiment alongside your top converting phrase match campaign.
You can easily AB test in Google Ads using the campaign experiments feature.
Located under Campaigns > Experiments
Using this feature build an experiment splitting the traffic by 50% for your original campaign vs the experiment version using broad match AND the targeted audiences you brainstormed in step 2.
Strategy #2: Advertising outside of English
English is the most competitive language in the world with the majority of advertisers.
We’ve seen reductions of up to 70% in our average CPC targeting other languages.
If your company has the resources to sell in multiple languages – take advantage of localization!
Localization campaigns are when you target keywords, write ad copy, and design landing pages that all are in your audience's native language (ex: Spanish, German, Portuguese).
You’ll reap the benefits of lower costs due to less competition.
The downside however with localization is search volume.
If you’re already advertising in English outside of North America and finding success, definitely recommend testing this strategy.
How to implement localized campaigns:
Step 1: Find proven converting phrase match keywords
Review your performance across converting phrase match keywords to identify which you’re going to prioritize testing with broad match discovery.
Don’t rely on “total conversions” make sure you’re viewing performance by keyword based on the custom metrics that matter for your business (ex: Demo, Trial, SQL, SAL, Opp, etc).
Step 2: Brainstorm your targeted languages
Ask your internal team what languages your sales team is able to sell in.
Based on your options make a list of potential languages.
Next, if you’re advertising outside of North America, review the top performing countries and identify their local languages and see if you have the internal resources that can speak that language.
If you can’t sell in this language then this strategy won’t make sense.
Step 3: Hire a local translator
Don’t make the mistake of relying on Google Translate to perform the bulk of your translation.
You’ll want to hire a translator that grew up in the area in which you want to advertise.
For instance, if you’re advertising in Portuguese.
The dialect for Europeans living in Portugal and those living in Brazil is very different.
A local brazilian can tell if it’s not their dialect just like a native portuguese.
I recommend hiring locals off Upwork can be as low as $12/hour depending on the language.
These translations will make a world difference in your ad and landing page copy.
Strategy #3: Industry campaigns
Industry campaigns can be great for coverage and quality.
This is where you’re going to bid on a desired keyword and add a related industry term.
For example, let’s say bidding on the keyword “crm software” here’s how you can modify this keyword to make it industry specific:
- healthcare crm software
- crm software for fintech
- crm software for small businesses
The benefits of industry campaigns:
- Personalized ad copy that can yield greater CTRs
- Higher quality leads due to a more qualified search term
- Lower cost per click prices due to less competition
The downside however is search volume (the constant struggle of Google for SaaS 😅).
How to implement industry campaigns:
Step 1: Find proven converting phrase match keywords
Just like the other strategies we’re going to identify proven keywords first that we can create industry variations for.
Step 2: Brainstorm your target industries
Run a win rate analysis in your CRM and understand which industries have the shortest sales cycles and largest deal sizes? Based on your findings, prioritise the industries in which you want to target.
Step 3: Build and prevent keyword overlap
Once you have your keywords and target industries you’re ready to build your campaigns.
Make sure to add your industry terms as negative keywords in your generic non-brand campaigns.
Otherwise you can have people seeing your generic ads for your industry terms.
Hope you found this article helpful!
Best of luck scaling your Google Ads campaigns for your SaaS.
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)