Event ads allow you to promote LinkedIn Events (online external, LinkedIn Live, or in person) from your Page to a defined audience before, during, and after the event. As a Sponsored Content ad format, event ads are displayed in a member’s LinkedIn feed and optimized to highlight important event details.
Using the event ad format, you can promote your event to help maximize registrations, live views, and lifetime views for your Company Page's LinkedIn Live Events.
Event ads can be selected as an ad format when you choose one of the following campaign objectives:
- Brand awareness
- Website visits
- Engagement
Benefits
With event ads you can achieve the following benefits for each stage of your event:
- Before the event - Drive event discovery and registrations with your target audience.
- During the event - Maximize live views during the event using accelerated delivery, as it delivers your campaign budget to your target audience as quickly as possible.
- After the event - Build retargeting audiences to drive full-funnel results by creating audiences based on registrations, viewership, or engagement and moving them down the marketing funnel. You can expand the reach of your content with targeted ads after your event featuring a video replay of your event.
How an event ad works
Once you create an event from your company Page, an event ad can be launched using a single Classic ad campaign or by using three separate Classic ad campaigns for each event stage (before, during, and after).
Regardless of the campaign option you choose (single or multiple), members will see a different ad experience depending on whether they see the ad before, during, or after the event. For example, your event ad will dynamically change to a single image before, a video livestream during, and a video replay after the event.
Important to know
An event ad will only dynamically change during each event stage if you are hosting the live event on LinkedIn. If you redirect your target audience to a different website, members will see a static event ad experience before, during, and after the event.
With event ads, you can:
- Set up event ad campaigns with a start time and end time, in addition to a start date and end date for more precise ad delivery aligned with your LinkedIn Event.
- Run event ads before your event to drive interest and advance responses with single-click event registration directly from the ad. Event attendees receive reminders leading up to the event and registrations can be used for retargeting event audiences.
- Run ads during your event to convert more members into live event viewers. You can further amplify reach during your event by using accelerated delivery as it delivers your campaign budget to your target audience as quickly as possible.
- Create retargeting audiences based on event registration, ad engagement, and ad views to continue connecting with your audience and moving them down the funnel. Retargeting is available for:
- View based - Views that came through the ad
- Engagement-based - Any person who engaged with the ad or organic event
Campaign options for event ads
Campaign options are available for event ads to ensure you have the flexibility and control you need. Using the following table, choose the campaign option that suits your requirements.
| Campaign option | Event ad | Audience, budget, bid | Reporting metrics |
| Single Classic ad campaign | A single end-to-end promotion for the event. Members will see a different ad experience before, during, and after the event. | The target audience, budget, and bidding strategy are set (can’t be changed). Accelerated delivery isn't available. | Granular reporting is available as campaign metrics are broken out by pre-event, during the event, and post-event. |
| Three separate Classic ad campaigns | A separate ad campaign for each event stage (before, during, after). Members will see a different ad experience before, during, and after the event. | Separate target audiences can be created and tailored for each event stage. Accelerated delivery can be enabled for the campaign during the event to maximize views. Bids can be changed. | Granular reporting is available as campaign metrics are broken out by pre-event, during the event, and post-event. |
Limitations
Consider the following limitations when using an event ad.
| Campaign area | Limitation |
| Campaign type | Event ads are currently only available with the Classic ad campaign type with the brand awareness, engagement, or website visits objectives. |
| Schedule | You can set a start date, end date, start time, and end time for your campaign. With standard Sponsored Content delivery, ad delivery will pace your campaign budget over the course of your campaign with the intention of spending all of the budget by 11:59 PM UTC on your campaign end date. This means that if you set your campaign end time to earlier in the day, you will likely have leftover budget, as ad delivery will be pacing to spend the budget by the end of the day (11:59 PM UTC). This limitation doesn’t apply to accelerated delivery. |
| Introductory text | When setting up your ad in Campaign Manager, you’ll have the ability to add optional introductory text that’s 600 characters or less. The introductory text is the same in the ads shown before the event, during the event, and after the event. As an alternative, you can create separate event ad campaigns for the three event stages with different introductory text. |
| Forecasted results | Forecasted results are directional and don’t guarantee performance. Results vary for campaigns with specific start and end times. Use with caution for short duration campaigns, for example, for campaigns that are less than 24 hours in duration. Forecasted results aren’t available for accelerated delivery. |
| Ad previews | Ad preview capabilities by device type and event stage (before, during, after) are limited to static previews, for example, they don’t show live video. |
| Reporting | Real-time reporting is available for spend, impressions, views, clicks. Attributed or calculated metrics such as registrations might show a slight delay. |
When you add event ads to your campaign, you can choose to create a new event ad or browse existing content, which includes previously created event ads as well as posts from your LinkedIn Page with event URLs.
Measure how many event registrations were received through your event ads with performance metrics. You can view event registrations when choose Performance or Conversions & Leads on your reporting dashboard. You can also create a custom column view with event registration metrics.