LinkedIn advertising has a minimum billing threshold that advertisers must meet in order to launch and run campaigns. This minimum spend ensures that LinkedIn can cover the costs of serving and optimizing ads, while providing advertisers enough budget to meaningfully test and measure performance.
LinkedIn Advertising Minimum Spend
The minimum billing threshold for LinkedIn ads is $10 per day. This means advertisers must spend at least $10 every day for their campaigns to remain active. If your daily spend drops below $10 for any reason, your ads will stop running until the minimum is met again.
This daily minimum applies to both self-serve advertising through the LinkedIn Campaign Manager, as well as LinkedIn’s managed advertising services. It’s also the same across all LinkedIn advertising objectives, including:
- Brand awareness
- Lead generation
- Website visits
- Job applicants
- Video views
In other words, regardless of your goal or the specific ad format you use, you’ll need to budget at least $10 per day.
Why LinkedIn Has a Minimum Spend
LinkedIn implements this minimum daily spend for a few important reasons:
- To cover the operational costs of serving ads and recording metrics. There are underlying costs involved on LinkedIn’s end each time an ad is displayed or clicked on. Requiring a minimum spend threshold ensures LinkedIn can support advertisers of all sizes on their platform.
- To allow for proper optimization and measurement. With a daily budget of only $10, an advertiser can achieve around 1,000 impressions or 100 clicks per day. This allows for basic analysis of performance and gives the LinkedIn algorithm enough data to begin optimizing based on results.
- To deter inactive accounts and wasted ad inventory. A minimum daily spend discourages advertisers from launching campaigns they don’t truly intend to manage or fund ongoing. This helps ensure ad space goes to serious advertisers only.
In short, the $10 per day minimum aims to create a better advertising experience for all—advertisers, LinkedIn, and LinkedIn users.
Strategies for Meeting the Minimum
As an advertiser, here are some tips for structuring your budget and campaigns to meet LinkedIn’s minimum spending requirement:
- Plan to maintain at least $10 in daily budget after the initial ramp-up period. Budget more than $10 at launch to account for the learning period where spending is often higher.
- Use all-time budgeting rather than daily budgeting. This gives LinkedIn more flexibility to deliver ads evenly over time.
- Start with higher cost-per-click bids to quickly generate traffic and spending. You can optimize bids down later as performance data comes in.
- Consider less competitive targeting options like narrowing down locations or demographics. This makes it easier to win auctions and drive volume.
While $10 per day is the bare minimum, it’s often smart to budget more than this, even if you’re just testing. $50 to $100 per day provides ample room for LinkedIn to optimize delivery and gives you richer data to work with.
What Happens If You Don’t Meet the Minimum
If your LinkedIn advertising account spends less than $10 total in a day, your ads will stop serving. You’ll see a warning message in Campaign Manager informing you:
“Your account has spent $X today, which is under the $10 minimum. Your ads will not run again until your daily spending meets the minimum.”
Once your account resumes spending above $10 for a day, your ads will go back to serving as normal. However, it’s best to avoid completely pausing as it resets LinkedIn’s optimization efforts and may lead to unpredictable performance swings when ads resume.
Minimums for Other LinkedIn Advertising Options
Beyond main LinkedIn ad campaigns, some other LinkedIn advertising channels have different minimum spends:
Sponsored Content
LinkedIn’s native advertising option for posting branded content in user feeds requires a minimum monthly spend of $500. Individual pieces of sponsored content must be budgeted at least $100 each.
Sponsored InMail
Sending targeted direct messages to LinkedIn members through Sponsored InMail comes with a minimum order quantity of 100 messages. There is no hard minimum on budget, but per message costs typically land around $3-5.
Text Ads
LinkedIn Text Ads that show at the top of search results have a very low minimum of $1 per day. However, volume and performance is typically limited at that budget level.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn’s advertising minimums aim to create a mutually beneficial platform for both advertisers and LinkedIn itself. By spending at least $10 per day and structuring campaigns to sustain this minimum, advertisers can gain access to LinkedIn’s highly targeted professional audience and robust optimization capabilities.