When you see ads on LinkedIn, we hope that you find them useful. LinkedIn serves ads that allow organizations and businesses of all sizes to connect with business professionals through a variety of ad products that we offer our advertising customers. Our LinkedIn “Marketing Solutions” business allows advertisers to select professional characteristics to help them reach their ideal audience. Here is how you can recognize ad formats:
- Professional Focus. Compared to other online sites and apps you visit, you will notice that most of the ads you see on LinkedIn tend to relate more to your professional and workplace activities, and less about your personal and family activities. That’s because LinkedIn works to attract advertisers that would like to direct their ads to other business professionals or people in the professional context (investing in their professional knowledge or looking for new opportunities). Like others who serve ads, we have a set of rules that explains to potential advertisers the types of ads that are appropriate for LinkedIn to serve. Learn more about the types of ads we allow and more below for ad safety.
- Transparency. When you see an ad, we look to make it clear that it is an advertisement by adding an “ad”, “promoted” or “sponsored” label onto it so that you can distinguish between commercial messages that we are paid to deliver/show to you from other content and experiences on the LinkedIn service. If you click on the “. . .” (three dots) right next to the “ad” label (or to the right of the title bar if in the main feed) you can learn more about why you are being shown a particular ad and how to report an ad.
- During your visit on LinkedIn you might see members endorse products, services, jobs, industry events and other matters. If members are being paid to deliver a message, we require that those posts are labeled as a “brand partnership.” Learn more. When a message has a brand partnership label, it’s different from an ad: (1) LinkedIn does not get compensated to show or promote the message (only the posting member is), (2) these messages are not vetted under LinkedIn’s own ad guidelines, but these messages must still be consistent with our professional community policies and are subject to reporting and review pursuant to those policies.
We offer several types of ad formats.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored Content is a promoted post from a company/advertiser that appears in members’ LinkedIn feed. It might feature text, an image, a video, a document, a click-to-message, or a single job posting and links to a related website of the advertiser’s choice. Sponsored Content can be identified by terms such as “Promoted” or “Sponsored” that appear in the upper left corner of the post, under the company name.
Sponsored Content may appear on both desktop and mobile devices.
When visiting LinkedIn from your desktop, text ads appear in the right column of the web page. These ads primarily consist of text, but may also include an image, such as the advertising company’s logo. Text ads will be labeled with an “Ad” or “Promoted” designation. Clicking the text on these ads will take you to a website chosen by the advertiser.
Sponsored Messaging includes message ads and conversation ads. These ads appear in the Message tab of LinkedIn alongside other messages you may have. They can be identified by the word “Sponsored” in the subject line of the message.
- Message ads are native ads, displayed in the messaging interface context to audience segments selected by the advertiser, not messages sent to a specific individual chosen by the sender.
- Conversation ads are also native ads but enable an advertiser to have multiple call-to-action (“CTA”) buttons that link to their landing pages, open a LinkedIn lead generation form, or encourage engagement with more information in the next message. So, even though you see them alongside other messages directed to you, the advertisers do not know who receives these messages, unless you click and fill out a lead generation form, in which case advertisers will know your contact information that you provide in the lead generation form. LinkedIn generates the audience for these ads based on segments the advertiser has selected.
- To learn more about the sponsored message you’ve received, you can click on the sender’s name to see information about the company who paid for the ad and partnered with the sender.
Dynamic ads are ads where the content of the ad is personalized for a member. Dynamic ads may appear in the right column of LinkedIn.com pages on desktop when a member is signed in to their LinkedIn account.
In a Dynamic ad, LinkedIn may use your profile image, name, and job function to create an ad tailored to you.
Note: Each member sees only their own personalized information and the Dynamic ad that you see will not be the same Dynamic ad that another member will see from the same advertiser. Members can also opt out of allowing their profile information to be used to personalize ads for them. Learn more about Dynamic ads advertising preferences.
Dynamic ads may be advertising jobs you might be interested in, companies you might be interested in, or professional content relevant to you.
Most ads shown by LinkedIn appear on LinkedIn.com or our LinkedIn branded apps. However, we allow our advertisers to choose to also use LinkedIn to show ads off of LinkedIn sites and apps. These ads and formats will be adapted to work on the ad formats and types supported by those third-party sites and apps. When we show ads off of LinkedIn sites and apps, we do not transfer data identifying our members to the third-party sites and apps that are displaying the ads. As a result, you will not see Dynamic Ads or Sponsored Messaging shown by LinkedIn off of LinkedIn sites and apps.
Manage ad content directly from the ad
When you see Sponsored Content in your LinkedIn feed, you can hide individual posts by clicking on the More icon in the top right of the post and selecting Hide this post. Learn more about Reporting Inappropriate Ads.
