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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 competitive and 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 automated bidding, where LinkedIn’s intelligent system does the work for you.

However, there are other bid types available to input a 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: find more information on the latest guides for bidding on LinkedIn. You can be assured that your marketing budget is being spent where it matters most to your business. But what if you don’t want to manage your bids? LinkedIn offers a variety of hands-off bidding options that will automate aspects of setting and managing your campaign bid so you don’t have to. This method will still help you get high-quality results that align with your marketing objectives.

Selecting Bid Types

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

Automated 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.

Maximum Cost 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.

Enhanced CPC Bidding - Bid on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis and our system will optimize your bid to those more likely to click, engage, or convert. Enhanced CPC Bidding is limited to these campaign objectives: Website visits, Engagement, Lead Generation, and Website conversions. We recommend this option if you want to optimize most for conversions or leads. Learn more here.

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?

*For video views objective, bidding by impressions optimizes for impressions (# of times people have seen your ad) whereas bidding by video views optimizes for video views (# of +2 continuous second-views at 50% on screen or a click on the CTA, whichever comes first)

**If default option to enable eCPC is deactivated, maximum CPC bid will optimize only for clicks (not lead gen submissions or conversions).

***Reach will become available for Brand Awareness + Automated Bidding campaigns later in fall 2020.

Bidding Best Practices to Get You Started

When you create a campaign in Campaign Manager, you can set your bid, budget, and scheduling. Use these tips to get started with a smart bidding strategy:

Maximum Cost Bid (Manual)

•  Campaign Manager suggests a bid range to make your ads most likely to be seen. Start at the high end of the recommended range. This will help in winning auctions.

•  If your campaign is not delivering clicks or impressions, it means your ads are not being seen. Try bidding higher above the suggested range to increase your chance of winning. You will only pay the minimum needed to win, not your maximum.

•   If your costs are too high, you can try reducing your bid slowly to find your preferred cost level. Monitor campaign performance and stop lowering the bid amount if you see a dip in key metrics (like impressions, clicks, or conversions). There may be a tradeoff between reducing your bid and delivery, volume of results, or ROI.

•   Experiment with changing your bid type to see how it affects the delivery and performance of your campaign. For example, if you’re bidding by cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM), you could change the pace of your ad spend by switching to cost per click (CPC).

•   Leverage the Forecasting Tool on the right side of your Campaign Manager window. It dynamically will predict performance as you input your campaign preferences. Start by comparing bid type results for one-day spend to see what works best for your goals.

Automated Bidding (Maximum Delivery)

•  Try Automated Bidding on campaigns that are spending 85% of their daily budget with Target Cost Bidding or with Maximum Cost Bidding. This an indicator of a healthy campaign that would benefit from using Automated Bidding (more results for your budget).

•  High costs? Try lowering the budget to the actual spend level from when you may have used Target Cost Bidding or used Maximum Cost Bidding. If switching bid types, try Target Cost Bidding next.

•  Leverage the Forecasting Tool on the right side of your Campaign Manager window. It dynamically will predict performance as you input your campaign preferences. Start by comparing bid type results for one-day spend to see what works best for your goals.

Target Cost Bidding

•  Not seeing the desired average cost? The system initially goes through a short learning period where it monitors campaign performance before it stabilizes the cost. If the campaign has fewer than 50 events (e.g. clicks, impressions, views), the learning phase is still underway.

• Both Target Cost Bidding and Automated Bidding are good options if you are uncertain how to bid for your campaign or if you do not have the time to regularly manage bidding for the campaign.