Do you know what would be useful for an affiliate on their LinkedIn profile? — Case studies of LinkedIn ad campaigns. Yes, compared to Facebook, it is a more exotic platform, but nonetheless, it holds great potential.
In this article, we will take a look at key features of advertising on LinkedIn:
- Introduce the platform to those who are unfamiliar with it;
- Meet its audience: learn about their locations and interests;
- Discover what LinkedIn Ad Library is and how to use it.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is an international social network for networking. Here, you can find and establish valuable business connections. Users typically use the platform in the following ways:
- Publish their CVs;
- Search for jobs/new employees;
- Recommend familiar experts to partners and act as those experts;
- Post current job vacancies;
- Create interest-based groups.
As of November 2023, the social network's audience has reached 1 billion registered users. Who are they?
Audience and Reach
As mentioned, LinkedIn is a professional social network that connects business people worldwide. However, the working population of the planet includes several generations, so let's discuss the platform's age demographics.
Age Demographics
According to Statista data as of January 2024:
- 51.6% of LinkedIn users worldwide are aged 25–34.
- Users aged 18–24 make up the second-largest age group on the platform at 24.7%.
- The third-largest group consists of users aged 35–54, accounting for 20% of LinkedIn's user base.
- Users over 55 years old comprise only 3.7% of the social network's audience.
Gender Demographics
Who do you think is more prevalent on LinkedIn: men or women? It turns out it's men. This is indicated by Statista data from January 2024. This is interesting and quite logical, considering the specifics of the social network — keeping in mind that not all women worldwide have the same access to education and employment opportunities as men.
- Men: 56.4%
- Women: 43.6%
Education Level
When working on ad campaigns, a webmaster should segment their audience and create an approximate profile of the target audience for each segment. Therefore, if you also engage in this practice (good for you, by the way), you will need information about the education level of the platform's audience.
According to a study of users on various online platforms in the USA:
- 10% of LinkedIn's audience have only completed high school (or did not finish it);
- 28% have graduated from some college;
- 50% have reached higher levels of education.
While we don't want to generalize, this data seems fairly representative of the platform's audience as a whole. It turns out LinkedIn is a social network for the educated? Indeed, this is crucial information because an educated audience requires a special approach — low-grade, flashy creatives won’t work here; you will need to carefully craft your strategy.
Countries and Reach
LinkedIn can be described as a worldwide platform, as it has users from around 200 countries. Ending the paragraph here seems odd, so let’s discuss LinkedIn’s advertising reach across different geographies. Understandably, user engagement with the platform varies across regions: in some places, access to LinkedIn is restricted, while in others, access to the internet itself may be limited.
For example, LinkedIn's reach in the USA is 82.2%, and in Malta, it is 70.8%. Below are more detailed statistics from Statista as of January 2024, though unfortunately, it does not cover all the geographies represented on LinkedIn.
To view geographic and other useful data for advertising, we don't necessarily need to seek out Statista reports because LinkedIn has its own amazing feature.
LinkedIn Ad Library
If you have ever used AdHeart, the explanation will be brief: LinkedIn Ad Library is the same thing, but for LinkedIn and it's free.
AdHeart is a tool for viewing competitors' ad campaigns on Facebook.
What is LinkedIn Ad Library?
LinkedIn Ad Library is a repository of advertisements displayed on the platform. Essentially, anyone can view the content of these ads, the advertisers who published them, and some advertising metrics without any registration or SMS verification.
How to Use LinkedIn Ad Library?
Using LinkedIn Ad Library is quite intuitive. To start your search, you can set one or more parameters:
Search by Specific Company or Advertiser: If you know your competitors, you can directly search for their ads.
Search by Keyword: You can look for ads containing specific keywords.
Select Targeted Geography and Ad Publication Date: You can filter ads based on geographic targeting and the date they were published.
For example, let's see who published ads targeting Belarus with the keyword "gambling" this month.
The filter returned 13 ads, and we are also shown the removed content, which is great — it allows us to see what triggers moderation.
Let's see what information we can extract from the ads. Click on "View Details," and a separate tab with the ad will open.
In the first ad, only information about the advertisement itself is accessible.
The second ad is very informative. In addition to the advertiser and the placement period, the following information is available:
Ad Impressions: Number of impressions and the percentage of impressions by different geographies.
Ad Targeting: Language and region. Since LinkedIn is also used as an HR platform, there is an additional vacancy parameter, which seems to be omitted if the ad is not related to hiring.
And how could we forget about the creatives? Of course, by looking through the library at competitors, you can see what creatives they are using on the platform.
Using Ad Library is not difficult — it's all about applying your analytical skills, correlating all the information, and developing your own strategy for launching ad campaigns on LinkedIn:
Which format is best to choose?
What targeting should be set?
How to avoid falling into the moderation trap?
The LinkedIn Ad Library is a great help in finding answers to these questions. It promotes transparency in advertising on the platform and allows marketers to make informed decisions when launching ad campaigns.
What Else is Important?
We searched for ads with the keyword "gambling," and only two (one of which was removed by moderation) out of the 13 results actually advertised casinos.
The rest were promoting various tools for buyers and affiliate marketing conferences. This indicates that LinkedIn is a niche social network. People here interact for work, and it is more suitable for B2B marketing. Every advertisement has its place, and while LinkedIn is a great and growing platform, it doesn't fit all niches.
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