When you launch an ad campaign on LinkedIn, what you’re charged for is determined by your campaign or ad set’s optimization goal and bidding strategy, while the cost of your ads is determined by an online auction system.
How advertising cost and billing works
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You create and launch an ad campaign.
- As you create your campaigns and ad sets, you’ll select optimization goals and bidding strategies that align with your marketing objectives. Together, the optimization goal and bidding strategy determine what the chargeable event is for your ads, such as impressions.
- You can also set a limit for how much your campaigns or ad sets can spend by setting budgets and schedules.
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Members in your target audience sign in to LinkedIn and scroll through their feed or visit pages that have available ad placements.
- When ad placements become available for member accounts who meet your target audience criteria, auctions are run to determine which ads are shown.
- Your ad campaign competes with other advertisers’ ad campaigns that have similar ad formats and target audiences to determine which ads are shown to members.
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Your ad is shown to members as it wins auctions.
- As your ads are shown to member accounts, you’ll gain impressions, clicks, video views, or message sends which will accrue ad spend.
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Your ad account’s payment method is charged.
- You’ll be charged for accumulated ad spend on a regular basis, depending on your ad account’s payment method.
Ad cost factors
The factors that determine the price you pay for ads are:
- Target audience - You bid against other advertisers trying to reach the same LinkedIn members accounts. The cost required to win the auction depends on the desirability of your target audience.
- Bidding strategy - The bidding strategy you select for your campaign or ad set will influence how much you pay per key result.
- Maximum delivery bidding strategy uses automated bidding to ensure your ad set is competitive in the ad auction. It’s designed to maximize your results while utilizing your full budget.
- Manual bidding strategy gives you the most control over your bid in the ad auction.
- Cost cap bidding strategy allows advertisers to set the maximum cost per action (CPA) that they are willing to pay for results.
- Objective - The marketing objective you choose will determine the optimization goals and bidding strategies available for your campaign or ad sets. Your optimization goal and bidding strategy will determine how your campaign or ad set is charged.
- Your ad relevance score - The LinkedIn auction rewards relevant, engaging ads. Your ads receive relevance scores based on factors like click-through rate, comments, likes, and shares. The more relevant your ad, the lower the price you pay.
Related tasks
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