If your target audience is B2B, LinkedIn is a great place to promote your business. Unlike other social platforms that are geared toward the masses, businesses included, LinkedIn is strictly professional. In other words, getting caught scrolling your LinkedIn feed at your desk wouldn’t garner a look from your colleague, like checking Instagram might.
LinkedIn allows you to advertise through images, lead forms, video, and more, where only your creativity is the limit—all within LinkedIn specs and guidelines, of course.
What makes LinkedIn such a perfect place to advertise B2B lies in its network—its audience is 100% business-focused, many with purchasing power. And when it comes to target audience segmentation by company information or job role, LinkedIn is unparalleled.
So, if you have a B2B business you’re looking to advertise, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to walk you through all the LinkedIn ad specs you need to know.
What are the specs for a LinkedIn ad?
Before you set up your campaign, make sure your assets are created to LinkedIn specifications for the best results. You can use many different ad formats and types of media. While the most popular ad types are single image and video—or what LinkedIn calls “sponsored content”—you can also create sponsored message ads, text and dynamic ads, and lead gen forms.
Regardless of your choice in media, you’ll need to also create a text headline and description to go along with your LinkedIn ad. Don’t get carried away with the copy—you’ll need to stick to the allotted character allowance to highlight your amazing products.
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Sponsored Content guidelines
Sponsored Content ads display on the LinkedIn feed of your target audience. They can be used for any of LinkedIn’s ad objectives, including brand awareness, website visits, engagement, lead generation, conversions, and job applicants.
There are seven types of Sponsored Content ad formats you can use on LinkedIn:
- Single image ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
- Click-to-message ads
- Single job ads
- Event ads
- Document ads
The specs for Sponsored Content on LinkedIn vary depending on which type you use.
Single image ads
Single image ads for Sponsored Content show up directly in users’ LinkedIn feed. You can use one image.
Here are more specs for single image ads on LinkedIn:
- Resolution: max 7680 x 4320 pixels, min 640 x 360 pixels (horizontal); min 360 x 640 pixels; max 2340 x 4320 pixels (vertical)
- File type: JPG, PNG, or GIF
- Max file size: less than 5 MB
- Aspect ratio: 1.91:1 (horizontal); 1:1 (square); 1:1.9.1 (vertical)
- Ad name (optional): up to 255 characters including spaces
- Headline: up to 70 characters
- Introductory text: up to 150 characters
- URL (required): up to 2000 characters
Keep in mind some images might be cropped when shared organically.
Pro tip: Use a UTM code when creating your LinkedIn ad URLs so you can track exactly where your traffic is coming from and how well your ad is performing! You can create a UTM code quickly and easily with this UTM builder.
Video ads
Another form of Sponsored Content ads are video ads. Videos are a great addition to your social content mix. Like single image ads, video ads display in users’ feeds.
Video can boost engagement on social media and offer a creative way to connect with your audience.
When creating your video ads, follow these LinkedIn video specs:
- File type: MP4
- Max file size: 200 MB
- Video length: 3 seconds–30 minutes
- Audio size: up to 64KHz
- Frame rate: 30 frames per second (fps) recommended
- Aspect ratio tolerance: 5%
LinkedIn also has specified dimensions for video ads depending on how they’ll display—horizontally, vertically, or square. Here are those guidelines:
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For your video ads, you’ll also need to choose a captivating thumbnail. Make sure the thumbnail you pick both highlights your product and is relevant to the LinkedIn ad you’re using. Once you’ve chosen your image, it needs to be formatted so it’s less than 2 MB and in either JPG or PNG format.
Quick tips for LinkedIn video ads:
- For awareness campaigns, keep your videos shorter, around 30 seconds or less. Videos less than 20 seconds will loop, increasing your impressions, as well.
- Keep longer-form video content for thought leadership, conversion campaigns.
- Stay on top of the latest video marketing trends so you can tap into relevant opportunities for your brand.
- Consider optimizing your video for social media uses beyond LInkedIn ads. You can repurpose it for an organic post or a different channel like Facebook or TikTok.
Take a peek 👀: how to create useful product videos for your customers >
Carousel ads
Carousel ads allow you to create an ad with multiple images, or cards. This can be helpful if you’re looking to tell a story through images, if you have too much content to fit onto one image, or if you’re just looking to show off your product from every angle!
Check out the LinkedIn carousel ad specs below:
- Resolution: at least 1080 x 1080 pixels (max 4320 x 4320 pixels; will be scaled to 312 x 312 pixels)
- Ratio: 1:1
- File type: JPG, PNG, or GIF (without animation)
- File size: up to 10 MB
- Name (optional): up to 255 characters
- Introductory text: up to 255 characters; less than 150 characters recommended to avoid truncation on some devices
- Number of carousel cards: 2–10
Card headline: up to 45 characters; max 2 lines
Click-to-message ads
Click-to-message ads on LinkedIn feature a single image ad in users’ news feed. When a user clicks on the ad CTA, they’re redirected to a conversation ad in the Focused tab of their LinkedIn Messaging inbox.
LinkedIn’s click-to-message ad specs are as follows:
- File type: JPG, PNG, or GIF
- Max file size: 5 MB
- Max image size: 7680 x 4320 pixels; less than 401 pixels wide display as a thumbnail image; animated GIF images must be 300 frames or shorter
- Ad image alt text: up to 300 characters
- Name (optional): up to 255 characters
- Intro text: up to 150 characters
- Conversation name: up to 255 characters
- Subject: up to 60 characters
- Custom footer and terms & conditions (optional): up to 20,000 characters
- Intro message: up to 8,000 characters
- CTA button text: up to 25 characters
- Max CTA buttons per message: 5
- Response message: up to 8,000 characters
- Templates to choose from: 10
If you choose to include an optional banner image (only available on desktop), you’ll need to keep the following specs in mind:
- Max image size: 300 x 250 pixels
- File type: JPG or PNG
- Max file size: 2 MB
If you want to add an image in the conversation, you’ll need to abide by the following:
- Max image size: 250 x 250 pixels (mobile might render differently)
- File type: JPG or PNG
- Max file size: 5 MB
Single job ads
Single job ads on LinkedIn are for promoting job openings in users’ news feeds. The job openings must be posted on LinkedIn.
The specs for single job ads are:
- Name (optional): up to 255 characters
- Intro text: up to 150 characters to avoid truncation (desktop up to 600 characters); URLs in this field longer than 23 characters are converted to a short link
Event ads
If you have an upcoming webinar to promote or maybe a Q&A about your most recent product launch, event ads are a great way to spread awareness. You’ll need to have it set up as an event on LinkedIn to be able to run this type of ad.
The specs for event ads are:
- Aspect ratio: 4:1
- Event name (optional): up to 255 characters
- Intro text: up to 600 characters (less than 150 recommended to avoid truncation)
Note: The image will be pulled directly from the Event page.
Document ads
If you have a flier, a whitepaper or a case study to promote, document ads are a great option.
Check out the document ad specs below:
- File type: PPT, PPTX, DOC, DOCX, or PDF (PDFs with multiple layers must be flattened or merged; PDFs with multiple sized pages must be fit to the same page size)
- File size: up to 100 MB
- Aspect ratio: vertical, horizontal, or square
- Document length: up to 300 pages (less than 10 recommended)
- Max number of documents: 5
- Word limit: 1 million
- Name (optional): up to 255 characters
- Intro text: up to 600 characters (less than 150 recommended to avoid truncation)
- Headline: up to 200 characters (less than 70 recommended to avoid truncation)
- CTA: Apply, Download, View Quote, Learn More, Sign-Up, Subscribe, Register, Join, Attend, or Request Demo
You can’t use video or animation for document ads. And hyperlinks are only clickable when users download the document, not when they’re viewing it within the ad experience on LinkedIn.
You can use any of the standard PDF layouts for your document ad:
- Letter: 8.5 by 11 inches
- Tabloid: 11 by 17 inches
- Legal: 8.5 by 14 inches
- Statement: 5.5 by 8.5 inches
- Executive: 7.25 by 10.5 inches
- Folio: 8.5 by 13 inches
- A3: 11.69 by 16.54 inches
- A4: 8.27 by 11.69 inches
- B4: 9.84 by 13.90 inches
- B5: 6.93 by 9.84 inches
Sponsored Messaging
Looking to slide into your target audience’s DMs? Then Sponsored Messaging is the way to go! Simply create text ads either through the “choose your own experience” conversation ads, or direct messages through message ads. There are two types of Sponsored Messaging ads:
- Message ads
- Conversation ads
Message ads
Message ads display native ads to your audience through LinkedIn Messaging. This ad type is available on both desktop and mobile experiences.
General message ad specs are:
- Banner file type (optional): JPG or PNG
- Banner image size (optional): 300 x 250 pixels
- Banner image file size (optional): up to 2 MB
- Sender image: the LinkedIn profile image of designated sender
- Ad name (optional): up to 50 characters
- Message subject: up to 60 characters
- Message text: up to 1,500 characters
- Custom footer: up to 2,500 characters
- CTA: up to 20 characters
- Landing page URL: up to 1,024 characters
- Custom footer and terms & conditions: up to 10,000 characters
Conversation ads
LinkedIn conversation ads are also accessible on desktop and mobile and rely on ads shown to active users in LinkedIn Messaging. The main difference here is that conversation ads allow you to use multiple CTAs, while message ads limit you to one.
Other specs for conversation ads include:
- Banner file type (optional): JPG or PNG (only displays on desktop)
- Max banner image size (optional): 300 x 250 pixels
- Banner image file size (optional): up to 2 MB
- Sender image: the LinkedIn profile image of designated sender
- Ad name (optional): up to 255 characters
- Message text: up to 8,000 characters
- Custom footer and terms & conditions: up to 20,000 characters
- CTA: up to 25 characters
- CTA buttons: up to 5
- Landing page URL: up to 2,000 characters
- Subject: up to 60 characters
Lead gen forms
Are you looking to generate leads to nurture? Then lead gen form ads could be the tool for you!
LinkedIn has a feature which allows its audience to fill out a form with their information, so you can follow up later. This could be to request a demo, to sign up for your newsletter, or whatever you choose.
You can use lead gen forms in conjunction with a single image, carousel image, video, message, document, or conversation ad. LinkedIn automatically populates the form fields with the user’s contact and profile information.
The sky’s the limit—as long as you stick to the lead gen form ad specs:
- Form name: up to 256 characters
- Landing page URL: up to 2,000 characters
- Offer headline: up to 60 characters
- Offer detail (optional): up to 160 characters
- Privacy policy: up to 2,000 characters
- CTA: up to 20 characters
- Confirmation message: up to 300 characters
- Custom questions (optional): up to 3; up to 100 characters each
You’ll need to select templated form fields in addition to your optional custom questions for your lead gen ad. LinkedIn recommends sticking to 3 or 4 form fields. You can choose from the following for form fields:
Text ads
LinkedIn text ads are ideal for companies on a budget. These ads are typical PPC. Rather than creating a lot of content, all you need is your company logo, a headline, and a description.
Specs for LinkedIn text ads are as follows:
- Logo file type: JPG or PNG
- Logo file size: up to 2 MB
- Logo image dimensions: 100 x 100 pixels
- Headline: up to 25 characters
- Description: up to 75 characters
- Landing page URL: up to 2,000 characters
- CTA text: Apply, Download, View Quote, Learn More, Sign Up, Subscribe, Register, Join, Attend, or Request Demo
Dynamic ads
Dynamic ads are designed to personalize the content of the ads to specific LinkedIn users, increasing relevance and engagement. You can use dynamic ads for a variety of reasons, including building brand awareness, generating more followers, or driving traffic to your website.
There are three types of dynamic ads:
- Spotlight ads
- Follower ads
- Jobs ads
Spotlight ads
Spotlight ads are a desktop ad format which brings users directly to your website or chosen landing page. These ads display personalized content to each profile, personalizing the ads each user is shown.
Spotlight ad guidelines are below:
- Ad description (above images): up to 70 characters
- Ad headline (below images): up to 50 characters
- Company name: up to 25 characters
- Min company image size: 100 x 100 pixels for JPG or PNG
- CTA: up to 18 characters
- Landing page URL: up to 500 characters
- Custom background image size (optional): exactly 300 x 250 pixels
- Custom background image file size (optional): up to 2 MB
Follower ads
Looking to grow your following for your LinkedIn Page? You can also run a follower ad campaign on LinkedIn with this ad format! These ads are available on users’ desktop experience. Follower ads require manual bidding.
Follow the specs for follower ads below, and you’re set for success.
- Ad description (above images): up to 70 characters
- Ad headline (below images): up to 50 characters
- Company name: up to 25 characters
- Min image size: 100 x 100 pixels for JPG or PNG
Jobs ads
Jobs ads show personalized job opening recommendations to users. This ad format requires you to have a LinkedIn job post to promote. It’s a great way to get relevant applicants.
The specs for dynamic jobs ads on LinkedIn are:
- Company name: up to 25 characters
- Logo: 100 x 100 pixels recommended
- Headline: up to 70 characters
- CTA: up to 44 characters
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Create LinkedIn ads that convert
So, now you’re equipped to go out and create the best, targeted B2B ads on LinkedIn for whatever you’re looking to advertise. For more pro-tips in creating successful ads on social media, get started with soona today!
LinkedIn ad specs FAQs
What is the standard LinkedIn ad size?
While LinkedIn allows our ads to take many different shapes and sizes, it’s always best practice to stick to the “standard” or most used LinkedIn ad sizes. In the case of single image, or sponsored content ads, most images on LinkedIn are 1080 x 1080 pixels, with an aspect ratio of 1:1, or square.
For video ads, LinkedIn recommends it be 1080 x 1920, with an aspect ratio of 9:16 for vertical videos, and 1920 x 1080 with aspect ratio of 16:9, for landscape.
Which ad format is the best for LinkedIn?
The best ad format for LinkedIn depends on your unique business, audience, and goals. Generally, Sponsored Content ads are best. They’re the default type of ad on LinkedIn, serve many different purposes, and support different types of content. Sponsored ads are also the most likely to be seen by a larger audience, as they appear on the main feed.