Bidding for LinkedIn Ads made simple

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Finding the right bidding approach is key to driving efficient results with your LinkedIn campaigns, and we are here to help! Since space for advertising on LinkedIn can be limited, ads compete in auctions through a bidding system. A bid is how much you are willing to pay for a specific action, like a click. Your bid type selection tells LinkedIn how to bid in the ad auctions.

When you create a campaign in Campaign Manager, the advertising platform on LinkedIn, you’ll choose your bid type and set your bid. Your ad will then compete against other advertisers’ ads targeting the same audience. We recommend starting off with our maximum delivery bid type, where LinkedIn’s intelligent system does the work for you. You can be assured that your marketing budget is being spent where it matters most to your business.

However, there are other bid types available depending on your specific marketing goals, where you can set your exact bid value. Keep in mind that if your bids are too low, or not as competitive, you may miss out on an opportunity to reach your audience. One way to improve your odds of winning an auction is to set a high, competitive bid. But don’t worry, even if you set a high starting bid, you often end up paying a lower cost per result once your campaign runs. That’s because on LinkedIn, your ads compete in a “second-price auction.” That means the winning bid in an auction pays just $0.01 more than the second-highest bidder. By strategically placing your bid, you’ll have a stronger chance of getting in front of audiences that are most likely to take an action on the ad (e.g. a click).

Smart bid management will improve the quantity and quality of your results, such as clicks or impressions, and markedly improve your ROI. You can find useful tips and ways to navigate bidding from the latest guides for bidding on LinkedIn.

When you run ads, you will pay only for clicks, impressions or video views, depending on which bid type you select.

Maximum Delivery Bidding - Our system uses historical campaign data and member information to automatically set the right bid for your ad. Generally speaking, this option will get the best results for your budget, while spending your budget in full. Note: Automated Bidding charges by impression, and currently only supports Sponsored Content. We recommend this option for volume of results, delivering your full budget, and for no bidding guesswork.

Target Cost Bidding - Target Cost Bidding, for CPC-CPM-CPV, is also an automated bidding option that provides advertisers an opportunity to specify their target cost. Campaigns are optimized to generate the most results, and the daily average cost per result will meet the specified target cost value, or up to 30% higher. Target Cost Bidding is available only for certain campaign objectives. You can learn more about Target Cost Bidding here. We recommend this option for cost predictability.

Manual Bidding - With LinkedIn’s manual bidding option, you are able to set the maximum bid amount you are willing to pay for, and the cost will not exceed that value. We recommend using this option if you want the most control over your bid value.

How do I pick between the different bid types?

What does it mean to optimize?
Optimizations refer to the efforts that maximize business outcomes of your campaigns. For marketers, this means ROI (Return on Investment) or ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). Since ROI is measured against an overall marketing budget, it may be tough to define on any one platform. You could then try specific metrics as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to track ROI, such as the cost of a click (CPC).

What optimizations are available for the bidding options?