LinkedIn ads provide a powerful way for businesses to reach their target audience and generate leads. With over 722 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is the largest professional social network and a key platform for B2B marketing.
One of the key advantages of LinkedIn ads is the ability to track performance through robust analytics. LinkedIn provides detailed metrics on ad impressions, clicks, conversions, and more. Analyzing these metrics is crucial for understanding what’s working and optimizing your ad campaigns for better results.
In this guide, we’ll walk through how to access and understand LinkedIn ad analytics. We’ll cover:
- Where to find campaign, ad group, and ad analytics
- Key metrics and reports to analyze
- How to calculate your LinkedIn ad performance
- Tips for getting actionable insights from LinkedIn analytics
Whether you’re just getting started with LinkedIn ads or looking to take your analysis to the next level, this guide will help you get the most out of LinkedIn’s analytics capabilities. Let’s dive in!
Where to Find LinkedIn Ad Analytics
LinkedIn provides ad analytics at three levels:
Campaign Analytics
Campaign-level analytics give you a high-level view of your entire LinkedIn ad campaign’s performance. This is useful for assessing the overall impact of your campaign and identifying high and low performing elements.
To view campaign analytics:
- Go to the Campaign Manager tab in LinkedIn Ads
- Click on the name of the campaign you want to analyze
- Go to the Reporting tab
Here you’ll see overview metrics for impressions, clicks, click rate, spend, and more for the lifetime of the campaign.
Ad Group Analytics
LinkedIn ad groups allow you to organize similar ads together around elements like product, service, audience, or goal. Ad group reports provide metrics for each group.
To find ad group reports:
- Go to the Campaign Manager
- Click on the ad group name
- Select Reporting
These reports provide more detailed breakdowns for your ad groups, letting you see which aspects of your campaign are performing best.
Ad Analytics
For the most granular data, you can view performance reports for each individual ad creative.
To access ad-level reports:
- Go to Campaign Manager
- Click on the ad group name
- Click on the ad name
- Select Reporting
Here you’ll find impression, click, conversion, and spend data specifically for that ad creative. This allows you to identify your highest performing ads.
Key LinkedIn Ad Analytics Metrics
Now that you know where to access reports, let’s look at some of the most important LinkedIn ad metrics to analyze.
Impressions
Impressions show how many times your ads were displayed. This indicates how far your ads are reaching and helps gauge audience size. More impressions mean greater exposure, but aim for relevant impressions to engaged users.
Clicks
Clicks show how many times users clicked your ads after seeing the impression. Higher clicks signal an ad resonates with your target audience. But optimize for qualified clicks from desired audiences.
Clickthrough Rate
Clickthrough rate is clicks divided by impressions. CTR measures how compelling your ads are to get users to click. Benchmark against industry averages. Higher CTRs typically mean more effective targeting.
Cost Per Click
Cost per click is calculated by total ad spend divided by clicks. CPC shows the average amount you’re paying for each click. Lower CPC means greater ad efficiency. Aim to reduce CPC over time while maintaining conversions.
Conversions
Conversions track desired actions from users after clicking your ad, like visiting your site, downloading content, making a purchase, etc. Set up conversion tracking to gauge ROI. Higher conversions signal profitable ads.
Cost Per Acquisition
Cost per acquisition measures total ad spend divided by conversions. This calculates your average cost to acquire a conversion. Lower CPAs mean greater return on ad spend. Look to reduce CPA over time.
Relevance Score
Relevance score is LinkedIn’s metric for how well matched an ad is to the audience and their interests, on a scale of 1 to 10. Higher relevance equals better targeting and lower CPCs. Aim for a score above 7.
LinkedIn Reporting Features
Beyond campaign data, LinkedIn provides additional reporting features to analyze your ads:
Location Reports
See ad performance broken down by geographic region. Identify your strongest locations.
Conversion Reports
Analyze conversions for goals like lead generation, content downloads, purchases, and more.
Audience Reports
View ads metrics for the job roles, industries, age ranges, and other traits of users who saw/clicked on ads.
CTR Comparison
Benchmark your CTR against other advertisers targeting similar audiences.
Landing Page Analysis
See clicks, conversions, and bounce rates for the pages users land on after clicking your ads.
Ad Preview and Testing
Test different ad variations against each other before launching to see which perform best.
How to Calculate LinkedIn Ad Performance
To properly evaluate your LinkedIn ads, you’ll want to calculate some key performance indicators (KPIs):
Clickthrough Rate
CTR = Clicks / Impressions
Example: 2,000 clicks / 10,000 impressions = 0.2 CTR or 20%
Cost Per Click
CPC = Ad Spend / Clicks
Example: $1,000 ad spend / 500 clicks = $2 CPC
Conversion Rate
Conversion Rate = Conversions / Clicks
Example: 100 conversions / 2,000 clicks = 0.05 or 5% conversion rate
Cost Per Conversion
CPA = Ad Spend / Conversions
Example: $1,000 ad spend / 50 conversions = $20 CPA
Return on Ad Spend
ROAS = Revenue from conversions / Ad spend
Example: $5,000 revenue from conversions / $1,000 ad spend = 5.0 ROAS
Benchmark your metrics against industry averages and your own past performance. Set goals to improve KPIs over time.
Turning LinkedIn Analytics into Actionable Insights
The most important step is to take your LinkedIn ad analytics and turn them into strategic decisions and optimizations. Here are some tips:
- Identify your best performing ads, ad groups, demographics, placements, etc. and duplicate those elements.
- Pause or remove underperforming ads with low CTRs, high CPCs, low conversion rates, etc.
- Refine your targeting to reach more qualified audiences relevant to your ads.
- Redesign or rewrite low performing ads to increase relevance and impact.
- Watch for trends and seasonality to spot opportunities to increase/decrease spend.
- Review your ad funnel for dropoffs between impressions, clicks, and conversions.
Continuously optimizing based on the data will improve your LinkedIn ad results over time.
Conclusion
Making the most of LinkedIn ad analytics takes an investment in reviewing the data regularly and acting on insights. While the platform provides powerful reporting, you need to put it to work for your campaigns.
Focus on a few key performance indicators like CTR, conversions, CPC, and ROAS. Calculate these metrics. Access reporting at the campaign, ad group, and ad levels. Dig into audience data. Set performance benchmarks. And implement changes to continuously improve based on the analytics.
Following this approach will help you get the most value out of your LinkedIn ad spend and reach your marketing goals.