LinkedIn Ads is the advertising system built into LinkedIn for reaching a professional audience. Unlike Google Ads or Meta Ads, targeting is built on professional data — job title, industry, company size, seniority level — which is why the platform is especially favored for B2B products and services.
This article covers LinkedIn Ads using the panel’s current naming, updated in 2025-2026: account setup, campaign objective, audience, ad format, and budget/bid steps, in order.
LinkedIn’s advertising objectives documentation shows which objectives are available when setting up a campaign. LinkedIn’s Insight Tag documentation explains how the measurement tag is created and managed. The panel naming change LinkedIn rolled out starting October 2025 also explains why the terms used in this article now sit closer to Google Ads and Meta Ads.
What Is LinkedIn Ads?
LinkedIn Ads is the advertising system managed through LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager panel. Ads can appear in the LinkedIn feed, within messages, or on partner sites through the LinkedIn Audience Network.
Targeting runs on professional data
Where Google Ads centers on search intent and Meta Ads on interest and behavior, LinkedIn Ads centers on professional signals: job title, industry, company size, seniority, and skills. This data reaches an audience that’s highly qualified for B2B campaigns but relatively small in volume.
CPM runs higher than other platforms
Cost per impression on LinkedIn typically sits above Google Ads and Meta Ads. This isn’t a supply-and-demand quirk — it comes from the audience itself: an impression that reaches a decision-maker carries different value than one reaching a broad consumer audience. Rather than judging the higher CPM on its own, it needs to be read together with the value of the leads it produces.
How Should the Account Structure Be Read?
A LinkedIn Ads account has three levels: Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad. This naming changed in October 2025 — what was previously called a “Campaign Group” is now labeled “Campaign,” and what was previously called a “Campaign” is now labeled “Ad Set.”
The panel name changed, the API name didn’t
LinkedIn made this change only in the panel interface; on the Marketing API side, endpoints and field names still use the old naming (campaignGroup and campaign). In an account that relies on automation or an API integration for reporting, the “Campaign” seen in the panel and the campaign field returned by the API may not point to the same level — on the API side, campaignGroup corresponds to the panel’s “Campaign” level.
The three levels do different jobs
The top Campaign level carries the overall objective and total budget. The Ad Set level sets the audience, bid, and schedule. The Ad level carries the image, text, and link the user actually sees.
How to Set Up a First Campaign, Step by Step
For someone who has never opened the panel, the setup order works like this:
- Open an ad account: Sign in to Campaign Manager with a LinkedIn account, create a new ad account, and link it to a LinkedIn company page. A payment method (credit card or invoicing) is set up at this stage.
- Choose the campaign objective: Pick one of brand awareness, website visits, engagement, video views, lead generation, website conversions, or job applicants. The objective determines which ad formats are offered in later steps.
- Build the audience: Location is the only required field. Layers can be added on top of it — job title, function, seniority, industry, company size, skills, or Matched Audiences (an uploaded list, website visitors, connections). The panel shows an estimated reachable audience size at each layer.
- Choose the ad format: Pick from the formats available for the chosen objective — single-image, carousel, or video Sponsored Content; Message Ads; Text Ads; Dynamic Ads.
- Set the budget and bid: Enter a daily budget, total budget, and campaign dates. The bid can be set automatically or manually.
- Create and submit the ad: Add the image, headline, and description, check the preview, confirm the payment details, and submit the campaign for review.
Why Choose the Campaign Objective First?
The objective isn’t just a reporting category — it also determines which ad formats and optimization options are offered. For example, choosing the Lead Generation objective activates LinkedIn’s built-in Lead Gen Forms: when a user clicks the ad, they can submit a form pre-filled with their profile data without leaving LinkedIn.
If the website visits objective is chosen but the real goal is form submissions, the system focuses on maximizing clicks and may not prioritize the people most likely to complete a form. The action the platform optimizes for needs to match the business’s actual goal.
A Common Mistake
The most common mistake is treating LinkedIn targeting as simply “showing ads by job title.” Job title fields are entered as free text by LinkedIn members, so they can be inconsistent; without combining them with industry, company size, and skill layers, the resulting audience can end up narrower or broader than expected.
Another mistake is reading the higher CPM on its own as “an expensive platform.” In B2B, the value of a single qualified lead can be many times higher than a consumer conversion — the comparison should run on cost per lead and lead quality, not CPM alone.
Summary
LinkedIn Ads is an advertising system built on Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad levels, with targeting based on professional data. The panel naming that changed in 2025-2026 brings the interface closer to Google Ads and Meta Ads, but the API side still uses the old names. A solid start requires the campaign objective, audience layers, and measured action to say the same thing as the actual business goal.