LinkedIn Document Ads: The Complete Guide

If you’re new to the wonderful and profitable world of LinkedIn advertising, LinkedIn Document Ads may be exactly what you need to market your brand.

There are various Linkedin ads types and formats, which suit different campaigns with different purposes. If you’re thinking of launching a LinkedIn Document Ad campaign, this article covers everything you need to know.

Key takeaways

For brand awareness and audience nurturing: use ungated Document Ads with the “Brand awareness” objective and the “Reach” optimization goal to maximize visibility without requiring user information.

To generate leads cost-effectively: use LinkedIn Document Ads with Lead Gen Forms and a manual bidding strategy, gradually increasing bids to optimize daily budget spending.

What are LinkedIn Document Ads?

LinkedIn Document Ads allow advertisers to create content for platform member audiences, who can then download the content without needing to leave the site.

It is a great way for B2B advertisers to utilise the platform to target their desired audiences while they’re browsing LinkedIn, and allows them to download the content without the inconvenience of being redirected away from the channel (such as to the advertiser’s website, etc.).

How it differs from other LinkedIn ad options is that it was exclusively designed for the advertiser to create content that isn’t suitable for short, succinct advertising. Instead, it allows you to create long-form content to a tailored “hot” audience. Our LinkedIn ads agency has seen good results using Linkedin document ads to promote case studies

Expert Tip: If you are using sponsored content to advertise your gated content try using the same content with Document ads instead and vice versa. I’m always surprised to see the same piece of content get totally different results depending on the format used.

Which campaign objective and Document Ads experience to choose?

Your goal is brand awareness and nurturing audiences

With Document Ads, you can drive engagement by sharing educational and inspiring content that your audience can read and download. In this case, non-gated content with the campaign objective “Brand awareness” works best.

Using the ungated Document Ad experience, members can read the entire document directly on LinkedIn without needing to leave the platform or provide additional information. They have the option to download the document to their desktop or mobile device, but downloading is not required to view the content.

Additionally, to maximize the reach for your target audience select the “Brand awareness” objective and pair it with the optimization goal “Reach.”

Your goal is to generate leads

If your goal is lead generation, using LinkedIn Document Ads with the Lead Gen Form experience is the best cost-effective approach.

Members will see a preview of your Document Ad in their newsfeed. After reaching the maximum number of pages they can view, they will need to select “Unlock Document” and complete a Lead Gen Form to access the full document. All leads will receive a confirmation message in their LinkedIn inbox, which includes the downloadable document, a thank you message, and a link to an external site.

For best results combine the Document Ad with a lead gen form and a manual bidding strategy. Start with a low manual CPC bid and gradually increase it until you reach your daily budget.

LinkedIn Document Ads: What to Bear in Mind

While LinkedIn Doc Ads certainly have their benefits for certain ad campaign types, there are a few minor warnings you’ll need to keep in mind before setting up your campaign:

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

When it comes to reporting the click-through-rate of your LinkedIn Document Ad campaign, you may find that the results are somewhat misleading.

While you may see results suggesting a high click-through-rate, this doesn’t necessarily equate to conversion. Instead the results will report total chargeable clicks, which includes:

Link clicks
Clicks to your company’s LinkedIn page
Post reactions
Post comments
Post shares
Clicks to read the full ad text

While this, of course, does mean your campaign is performing and is being interacted with, it is not accurate data to calculate the overall success and ROI of your ad.

Case Study: How We Helped a Security Analytics Software Company Generate 42% More SQLs Using LinkedIn Ads

Call-to-Action (CTA)

LinkedIn Doc Ads do not give much freedom and flexibility with your call-to-action. What we mean by this is, regardless of your campaign objective, the only CTA option you’re allowed is the “download” choice, meaning that’s all your audience will be able to do if they click on it.

While you’ll be able to include external links in the text body of your campaign, for example, if you wanted to drive your audience to your website’s homepage, this won’t be calculated as CTR data. Meaning when it comes to monitoring the native KPIs, you won’t have a very specific forecast of your ad’s performance – especially if you really want readers to visit your website.

Please note: if redirecting your audience to your website is a primary focus, this ad type probably isn’t the best option for this target.

Expert Tip: A/B testing your content is crucial for improving performance. If your offer is strong, you’ll generate leads at a low cost. If it’s not, lead volume will be low and costs will rise. Therefore, if you have multiple resources, begin by testing those first. Once you identify an offer that performs well, you can then start testing some different intro text or design cover.

Mobile-Only Content for Lead Gen

If your campaign objective is lead generation, this ad type is exclusive to LinkedIn members using the mobile site only. However, if your objective falls under one of the other options (for example, brand awareness), desktop users (as well as mobile users) will be able to see your content.

Hopefully LinkedIn is working to change this to provide more flexibility, so watch this space!

LinkedIn Doc Ads: Specs

All advertising on LinkedIn has its own specs you need to adhere to. Document Ads specs are as follows:

Limit: 300 Pages or 1MM words
File type: PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX (your best bet is to opt for PDF)
Aspects: vertical, horizontal, square
Size: 100MB

Case Study: How We Helped Kodo Survey to Generate 167% More Leads in 3 Months Using LinkedIn Ads

How to Create Your LinkedIn Doc Ads Campaign

Before you begin, you’ll need to log in to your LinkedIn account (or set one up if you haven’t got a personal one) and head to Campaign Manager and set up your ad account, linking your company’s LinkedIn page. Once you’ve done this, here’s what to do next:

Select your campaign objective – you can only choose one, so focus on the goal your company needs the most right now.
Choose your targeting criteria. Consider and draw upon your ideal audience. Always aim for company decision-makers and relative demographics.
Choose the ad format you require. You need to get this right the first time, because once invested – you cannot change it. Do some research into formatting per objective, if need be.
Complete all the required fields and begin to upload your ad content.
Click save.

Conclusion

LinkedIn Document Ads are extremely beneficial, but their advantages are exclusive to certain advertisers and campaign types.They are great for long-form content, and if you require your B2B audience to download something (such as an eBook).Those with other desired outcomes (such as web traffic) are advised to veto this ad type and look into one of the other LinkedIn ad options.

If you’d like to learn more about how we help B2B SaaS and Tech companies grow their MRR through LinkedIn advertising, contact us online or send us an email today at info@getuplead.com to speak with someone on our team.