How do I stop LinkedIn ads from running?

LinkedIn ads allow businesses to reach LinkedIn users based on their job titles, skills, interests, and other professional details. While LinkedIn ads can generate leads and help grow your business, sometimes you may want to pause or stop your ads from running. There are a few options for stopping your LinkedIn ads.

Why Stop LinkedIn Ads?

There are several reasons you may want to stop your LinkedIn ads:

• You want to pause the ads temporarily – For example, if you’re going on vacation or need time to create new ads and landing pages.
• You’ve reached your lead or budget goals – Once your campaigns have achieved their objectives, it’s a good idea to stop the ads.
• The ads aren’t performing well – If you find your LinkedIn ads have low click-through or conversion rates, you’ll want to stop running them.
• You want to make changes to the campaign – Stopping the ads gives you a chance to tweak targeting options, ad creative, landing pages, etc.
• Your budget is depleted – LinkedIn ads stop serving automatically once your daily or overall budget has been reached. However, you’ll still want to pause the campaign.

Knowing when to stop ineffective or already-successful ads can help avoid wasting money. Stopping ads also provides an opportunity to improve your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

How to Temporarily Pause LinkedIn Ads

If you want to take a short break from LinkedIn ads, you can easily pause your campaigns:

1. Go to your LinkedIn Ads Manager account.
2. Find the campaign you want to pause.
3. Click on the 3 dots next to the campaign name and select “Pause”.

This will stop your ads from being delivered. Your ads won’t accrue any additional cost while paused. You can resume a paused LinkedIn campaign at any time.

Pausing campaigns is ideal if you just need a quick break from ads and plan to start them up again soon. All your targeting settings, creatives, budgets, etc. will remain intact.

How to Permanently Stop LinkedIn Ads

To completely stop your LinkedIn ads from running and accruing costs:

1. Go to your LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
2. Locate the campaign you want to stop.
3. Click on the 3 dots next to the campaign name and select “Stop”.

Stopping a campaign is more permanent than pausing. Once stopped, the ads won’t run again until you manually restart the campaign.

You can also choose to delete a LinkedIn campaign entirely if you don’t need it anymore:

1. Go to your LinkedIn Ads Manager.
2. Find the campaign you want to delete.
3. Click on the 3 dots next to the campaign name and select “Delete”.
4. Confirm that you want to delete the campaign.

Deleting a campaign permanently removes it from your account. The ads will stop running and all the campaign’s settings will be lost. Only delete campaigns that you’re certain you no longer need.

Stopping Ads at the Ad Group Level

Within a LinkedIn campaign, you may have several ad groups targeting different audiences. You can stop ads at the more granular ad group level too:

1. Go to your LinkedIn Ads Manager.
2. Find the ad group you want to stop.
3. Hover over the 3 dots next to the ad group name and click “Stop”.

This will stop this specific ad group but leave your other ad groups running. Use this to pause parts of a campaign while keeping the rest active.

How to Stop LinkedIn Sponsored Content Ads

LinkedIn has two main types of ads – Sponsored Content and Sponsored InMail. To stop Sponsored Content ads:

1. Go to your LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
2. Locate the Sponsored Content campaign.
3. Click on the 3 dots next to the campaign name and select “Stop”.

This will prevent your Sponsored Content updates from being shown in LinkedIn feeds. Use the same process to stop Sponsored InMail messages.

You can also remove a specific Sponsored Content update:

1. Click on the update in Ads Manager.
2. Select “Delete update” to permanently remove it.

Stopping LinkedIn Ads from Your Billing Settings

Another way to stop LinkedIn ads is to pause automatic payments in your billing settings:

1. Go to the billing page in LinkedIn Ads Manager.
2. Next to your payment method, toggle the switch off for “Automatically charge my account”.

This will stop ads from continuing to run once your current account balance is depleted. New ads won’t run until you enable automatic payments again.

You can also call LinkedIn’s billing department at 1-855-655-5653 to request cancelling automatic payments. This will likewise prevent ads from continuing once your balance is used up.

Effect on Costs When Stopping LinkedIn Ads

When you stop LinkedIn ads, you’ll stop incurring additional costs for ad delivery. However, it can take up to 24 hours for in-progress ads to stop, so you may see some minimal further costs.

Any amount you already spent on ads will still be owed. Stopping a campaign doesn’t allow you to recoup costs already accrued.

Once stopped, LinkedIn ads will not continue accumulating costs. But you’ll still need to pay any outstanding balance.

Impact on Results When Pausing LinkedIn Ads

When you pause LinkedIn ads, even temporarily, it can impact your campaign results:

• Loss of momentum – Taking breaks means your ads aren’t being seen, so you may lose traction.
• Decreased visibility – Your ads won’t show up in feeds, so fewer prospects see your message.
• Drop in performance – Key metrics like clicks and conversions may decrease once ads are stopped.
• Rise in CPC – If you pause for too long, your cost-per-click could increase when restarting ads.

While short pauses may not hurt too much, frequent starts and stops or prolonged pauses can negatively impact campaign effectiveness. Maintain consistency when possible.

Benefits of Pausing LinkedIn Ads

Despite potential downsides, there are advantages to temporarily pausing LinkedIn ads:

• Saves money in the short term – No new spending while paused.
• Lets you update campaign elements – Pause gives time to improve ad copy, landing pages, etc.
• Prevents overspending – Good if you need to avoid exceeding budgets.
• Allows for account review – Pause helps you thoroughly analyze account performance.
• Gives time to create new ads – You can design fresh creatives and ad copy.

Well-planned, short-term pauses can strategically help manage budgets and enhance campaigns. Just beware of lengthy pauses.

Tips for Pausing LinkedIn Ads Successfully

To pause LinkedIn ads without harming performance:

• Avoid pausing campaigns for more than 7-14 days if possible.
• Only pause lower-performing ads – Keep your best ads continuously running.
• Build sufficient audiences before pausing – At least 1000+ audience size for each ad group.
• Plan pauses strategically around major holidays, events, etc.
• Set a calendar reminder to restart paused campaigns and ad groups.
• Use the pause time productively – Refresh ad copy, landing pages, offers, etc.

With smart planning, you can successfully pause parts of your LinkedIn ad efforts when needed.

Conclusion

Pausing or stopping your LinkedIn ads is easy to do right from Campaign Manager. You have options to temporarily pause campaigns and ad groups, or permanently stop ads that you no longer need.

While pauses can lead to lost momentum and lower performance, brief strategic pauses can provide benefits like saving budget and improving campaign elements. Plan your LinkedIn ad pauses carefully to minimize impact on your marketing results. With mindful management, you can stop and start LinkedIn ads successfully.