LinkedIn introduces ad tools to simplify campaigns for small businesses

LinkedIn has introduced updates to its advertising platform aimed at helping small business marketers streamline campaign setup, creative production, and optimisation. The changes focus on making it easier to reach audiences, produce ads, and improve performance with less effort.

One key feature, Autlinko-Targeting, allows advertisers to provide basic signals, such as a URL, customer lists, or target industries and job functions, while the platform’s system identifies the audience most likely to engage and convert. Advertisers can also refine audiences using exclusions. The advertisers need to tell the platform ‘what’ and it identifies it for ‘who’.

For creative production, Draft with AI uses existing ad content, Shutterstock visuals, and the platform’s generative AI to generate headlines, text, and image suggestions. The output is editable, thus the advertisers can capitalise without losing creativity. According to the platform, small businesses using generative AI creatives in Accelerate campaigns produced 2.5 times more ads per campaign. Data also shows that including five or more ads in a campaign can lead to up to a 20% improvement in click-through rates.

The platform has also integrated Canva and Adobe Express to help users create professional-quality visuals without extensive design experience. LinkedIn-optimised templates for images, videos, and carousels can be exported directly to Campaign Manager, reducing the time needed to launch campaigns.

To aid optimisation, LinkedIn Recommendations provides data-driven suggestions to improve campaign performance. Advertisers can A/B test these recommendations and apply successful changes with one click across eligible campaigns.

The platform has outlined a sample small business campaign launch plan that can be completed in under an hour: 10 minutes to select objectives, 10 minutes to set up Auto-Targeting, 20 minutes to produce 3-5 creative variants using Draft with AI and Canva/Adobe Express, 5 minutes to launch, and 10 minutes post-launch to review recommendations and A/B test changes.

The platform encourages advertisers to monitor metrics such as CTR, CPC, and CPL during the first week and use the insights to guide campaign adjustments.