With message ads, you can engage your prospects through native ads displayed through LinkedIn Messaging.
Important to know
Message ad campaigns cannot target members based in the European Union (EU). If a campaign includes both EU and non-EU targeting, the campaign will continue to deliver to non-EU audiences.
Message ads include a custom greeting, call-to-action (CTA) button, body text, and the ability to add a link in the message body. You can also add a custom footer to disclose legal terms, promotion rules, contact information, and more. If you selected lead generation as your campaign objective, you’ll also need to attach a Lead Gen Form.
Before creating a message ad, create a new campaign and select website visits, lead generation, or website conversions as the objective. You can also create new ads for an existing message ad campaign by editing your campaign.
To create a message ad:
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Go to the Ads in this campaign page in Campaign Manager.
- New campaign - If you're creating a new campaign, you'll go to the Ads in this campaign page after selecting your campaign settings.
- Existing campaign - To add an ad to an existing campaign, you can edit the campaign to go to the Ads in this campaign page.
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Click Create new ad.
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Name the ad.
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Select a sender or click the Add sender button to add an unlisted member of your network.
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Click the Message section and enter the subject, message text, and optional footer and terms and conditions.
- Use macros to personalize your message. You can manually type macros into your message or you can click the Insert custom field button to select from the options available.
- You can add hyperlinks to your message by clicking the
Link icon.
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Enter the Call-to-action and Landing page URL.
- All URLs must have the http:// or https:// prefix.
- If you add URL parameters for third-party tracking, do not use quotation mark characters within the parameter settings to avoid technical errors with reaching your destination URL.
- Some special characters (for example: < > # % { } [ ] and others) cause errors when they're included in the query string at the end of the URL. Even if unsafe characters are accepted, they may not be supported in all browsers. If your URL generates an error, copy everything after the question mark into the URL and paste it into a URL encoder like this one: http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/. Then, copy your results and replace the original query string in the URL. This should resolve the issue.
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Optional: Click the Upload button to add a banner image.
- If you don’t include a banner, ads from other advertisers might appear in that slot.
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If you selected lead generation as the campaign objective, you’ll need to attach a form to your ad. Click the Form details section and click the Form dropdown to either select an existing Lead Gen Form or create a new one.
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Click the Create button in the lower-right corner.
- Once you’ve added a creative to a campaign, it can’t be deleted. If you don’t want the creative attached to your campaign, delete the draft campaign and create a new one.
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On the Ads in this campaign page, you can also Duplicate, Edit, Remove, or Send test message by clicking the
More icon to the right of the ad. -
Click the status dropdown menu to change the status of the ad from Draft to Active. Once an ad has been changed to active, it can’t be edited. The ad status will need to be changed before the ad can display to members in your target audience.
When you’re ready, you can launch your new campaign or save changes to an existing campaign. Your ads will be reviewed and, if approved, are displayed based on your campaign settings.
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