Types of LinkedIn Ads: Every Format and How to Choose

The question I get asked most often about LinkedIn advertising is which of the types of LinkedIn ads to use. It is almost always the wrong first question. Campaign Manager won't even show you the full menu of formats until you have picked an objective, because the objective decides what LinkedIn will let you run. Choose "video views" and you get exactly one option. Choose "brand awareness" and you get eleven.

I'm Raphael Presberg, Founder and CEO of Moriah, a LinkedIn marketing agency and a LinkedIn Certified Marketing Partner. LinkedIn Ads are one of three pillars we run for established B2B companies, alongside executive personal branding and targeted outreach, and they only do their job when all three run together. What follows is the full catalogue: every one of the types of LinkedIn ads available in 2026, grouped the way LinkedIn itself groups them, with an honest note on what each is good for. Then a framework for choosing, so you are not picking off a dropdown and hoping.

The Types of LinkedIn Ads at a Glance

LinkedIn sorts its inventory into four families. Lead Gen Forms sit slightly apart, since they attach to several formats rather than standing on their own.

That's the whole board. Most B2B companies end up using four or five of them and can safely ignore the rest.

LinkedIn Ad Types by Campaign Objective

LinkedIn asks for your objective first, and that one choice narrows everything downstream: which formats you can pick, which bidding strategies open up, what the platform optimizes toward. Eight objectives, in three groups.

Awareness

Brand awareness is the only objective here, and it optimizes for reach or impressions. It also opens the widest set of formats: single image, video, carousel, document, event, article and newsletter, thought leader, conversation, text, spotlight, and follower ads. Connected TV ads run here, and nowhere else.

Use it when the job is to be known by a defined audience rather than to collect anything from them. For most established B2B companies this should be the smallest line in the budget, not the biggest.

Consideration

Website visits optimizes for landing page clicks. Formats: single image, carousel, video, event, document, text, spotlight, message, and conversation ads.

Engagement optimizes for social actions on LinkedIn itself, so likes, comments, shares, follows. Formats: single image, carousel, video, event, document, article and newsletter, thought leader, follower, and conversation ads.

Video views optimizes for views and accepts video ads only. Narrowest objective on the platform, by some distance.

Conversions

Lead generation optimizes for leads captured inside LinkedIn through a Lead Gen Form. It runs with single image, carousel, video, event, article and newsletter, and document ads carrying a form, plus message and conversation ads.

Website conversions optimizes for actions on your own site, tracked through the LinkedIn Insight Tag. Formats: single image, carousel, video, event, document, text, spotlight, message, and conversation ads.

Job applicants is the recruiting objective and runs job ads, single image ads, and spotlight ads.

Talent leads collects interest from potential candidates and needs an active LinkedIn Recruiter contract. It runs single image, carousel, video, and spotlight ads.

Sponsored Content: The Ads That Run in the Feed

This is where the overwhelming majority of B2B budget goes, for the simple reason that it's the only family appearing where people are actually reading.

Single Image Ads

One image, a headline, some introductory text, one call to action. It's the default for good reasons: it works with almost every objective, it's quick to produce, and it gives you a clean read on whether the problem is your message or your audience. Testing anything? Test it here first.

Video Ads

Video runs against brand awareness, website visits, engagement, video views, lead generation, website conversions, and talent leads. The genuinely useful thing about video on LinkedIn isn't the format, it's the reporting. View-through data tells you whether people stayed, and that says far more about message quality than a click does.

Carousel Ads

Multiple swipeable cards, each with its own image and link. Carousels suit a sequence: three proof points, a compact case study, a process broken into stages. They can carry a Lead Gen Form. They're also more work to produce than a single image and rarely beat one on cost per lead, so treat them as a deliberate choice rather than a default.

Document Ads

A PDF rendered right in the feed. Readers flip through the first pages inside LinkedIn and download the full file, optionally behind a Lead Gen Form. For B2B I'd put this among the strongest formats on the platform, because a genuinely useful document is one of the few assets a busy executive will trade an email address for. It runs against brand awareness, website visits, engagement, lead generation, and website conversions.

Thought Leader Ads

A thought leader ad promotes a post published by a person rather than by the company page. You need the creator's permission, their profile has to show their full name, and the post must be public. It supports brand awareness and engagement, and video posts also support video views.

A few limits worth knowing before you build a plan around it. Celebration posts, documents, polls, multi-image posts, and reposts aren't eligible. Single image and video thought leader ads get no call-to-action button either, though you can drop a URL into the introductory text.

This format is the clearest illustration of why we run ads and personal branding together at Moriah rather than as two separate projects. Content published from a personal profile performs roughly 5 to 10 times better than the same content from a company page. Thought leader ads let you put budget behind that gap. But only if an executive is publishing something worth promoting in the first place. No posts, no format.

Event Ads

Built from a LinkedIn Event page, with the date and a register button. They run against brand awareness, website visits, engagement, lead generation, and website conversions. If your pipeline runs through webinars and roundtables, this is the highest-intent awareness format you can get.

Connected TV Ads

Video delivered to streaming TV, targeted with LinkedIn's professional audience data. The constraints are strict. Brand awareness objective only, with the Connected TV toggle enabled. Targeting limited to the United States and Canada, English as the audience language. Maximum delivery bidding. And a video asset meeting the Connected TV specifications, where LinkedIn recommends 15 or 30 seconds. Reporting covers delivery and professional demographics rather than the click-based metrics you're used to in the feed.

It's a brand-building instrument for companies with real budget and a broad category story. It is not a lead channel.

Article and Newsletter Ads

These amplify long-form articles and newsletter editions published on LinkedIn. Handy if you already publish a newsletter with a following behind it. If you don't, this format is a reason to start one, not a reason to run ads.

Job Ads

Sponsored posts pointing at an open role, used with the job applicants objective. Recruiting sits outside most marketing budgets, but it comes up often enough in client conversations to be worth listing.

Sponsored Messaging: The Ads That Land in the Inbox

Conversation Ads

A message that opens with a short note and offers several buttons. Each button can send the reader to a landing page, open a Lead Gen Form, or deliver another message with more options. You're effectively building a small branching path, and the reporting shows which branch people take, which tells you something useful about what they actually came for.

Conversation ads run against brand awareness, website visits, engagement, lead generation, and website conversions. They're billed per send.

Message Ads

One targeted message, one call-to-action button. Simpler than a conversation ad and a better fit when there's exactly one thing you want the reader to do. Message ads run against website visits, lead generation, and website conversions.

One restriction matters a lot here. LinkedIn supports Sponsored Messaging targeting in the European Economic Area and Switzerland, but only members who have opted in to receive these ads in their inbox will get them. If a meaningful share of your audience sits in Europe, plan your reach accordingly.

Sponsored Messaging is also the format clients most often confuse with the targeted outreach we run. They're not the same thing at all. Sponsored Messaging is paid inventory billed per send, roughly $0.26 to $0.50 per message delivered. Targeted outreach is a person's own account messaging a qualified individual. Both have a place, and the reply rates are why we lean on LinkedIn at all: cold email typically returns 1 to 3 percent replies, while LinkedIn messaging tends to sit around 10 to 15 percent.

Text and Dynamic Ads: The Right Rail

These formats appear beside the feed, desktop only, which means they miss mobile traffic entirely.

Text Ads

A small headline, a short description, a thumbnail. Cheap per click, simple to run, and they work with brand awareness, website visits, and website conversions. They won't carry a complicated B2B message on their own, but they're inexpensive enough to leave running quietly underneath a larger campaign.

Spotlight Ads

A personalized right-rail unit that pulls in the viewer's own profile photo and shows a custom call to action pointing at your site. Available for brand awareness, website visits, website conversions, job applicants, and talent leads.

Follower Ads

Same right-rail placement, except the call to action is to follow your company page. Available for brand awareness and engagement. Followers are a legitimate objective for some companies, though rarely the one an established B2B business should be paying for.

Lead Gen Forms: Not a Format, an Attachment

Lead Gen Forms are native forms that open inside LinkedIn and pre-fill with the member's own profile data: name, title, company, email. They attach to Sponsored Content formats including single image, carousel, video, document, and thought leader ads, and to both Sponsored Messaging formats.

Because they cut out the landing page entirely, they usually produce the lowest cost per lead of anything on the platform. The trade-off is real and worth saying out loud: a pre-filled form is easy to submit, so a share of those leads are barely engaged. Cost per lead drops. Lead quality can drop with it. Judge them on qualified conversations, not on form fills.

How to Choose Between the Types of LinkedIn Ads

Here's the sequence we use with clients. Four questions, in this order.

1. What business objective is this campaign serving? Not "generate leads" as a reflex, but the actual outcome: entering a new market, launching a service, being visible to a specific set of buyers, filling a webinar. That determines the Campaign Manager objective, and the objective gates the format list. Get this wrong and no format will rescue the campaign.

2. How warm is this audience? Someone who has never heard of you is not going to fill in a form. Cold audiences need awareness and engagement formats: single image, video, thought leader, document. Warm audiences, meaning people who visited your site or engaged with a post, are where Lead Gen Forms, conversation ads, and website conversion campaigns earn their cost.

3. What asset do you actually have? This is where most plans quietly fall apart. A document ad needs a document worth reading. A thought leader ad needs an executive who is already posting. An event ad needs an event. Pick the format that matches what exists, or accept that you're commissioning the asset first.

4. How will you judge it? Video views, landing page clicks, form fills, and qualified meetings are four different measures. Decide which number counts before launch, because the objective you choose tells LinkedIn what to optimize for, and it will do exactly what you asked it to.

Work through those four and the format usually picks itself. A rough starting stack for an established B2B company: single image ads to test messages, document ads with a Lead Gen Form for capture, thought leader ads behind your best executive posts, conversation ads for a warm retargeting audience. That covers the funnel without spreading budget across formats nobody has the content to feed.

What the Right Format Cannot Fix

Let me be direct about the limits of everything above, because choosing a format is the smallest decision in a LinkedIn program.

Ads on LinkedIn are expensive next to other channels. Cost per click typically runs $5 to $8 globally and $8 to $10 in the US, cost per thousand impressions lands between $30 and $50, and cost per lead falls anywhere from $75 to $400. LinkedIn's technical minimum is $10 per day per campaign, though a B2B test that produces readable data needs closer to $3,000 to $5,000 per month.

At those prices, the deciding factor isn't which format you picked. It's what a prospect finds when your ad works. If the click sends them to a founder's profile that has been silent for two years, you've wasted it. If your targeted outreach reaches someone who has never seen your name, the message lands cold. Ads, personal branding, and targeted outreach are three parts of one business engine, and running one without the others is what makes LinkedIn look expensive.

Which is why Moriah doesn't sell LinkedIn Ads as a standalone service. We run ads alongside executive personal branding and targeted outreach, all three pointed at a single business objective, executed in-house on a monthly retainer that in the US is $4,000 per month. No minimum term, no lock-in. Whatever the business objective, there is an answer to it with the right LinkedIn strategy, and if you're trying to work out which types of LinkedIn ads fit yours, it's a better conversation with the whole engine in view than one format at a time. Book a call and we'll map it against your actual objective.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the types of LinkedIn ads? LinkedIn offers Sponsored Content (single image, video, carousel, document, thought leader, event, Connected TV, article and newsletter, and job ads), Sponsored Messaging (conversation and message ads), text ads, and Dynamic Ads (spotlight and follower ads). Lead Gen Forms attach to several of these rather than being a format on their own.

Which LinkedIn ad format works best for B2B? Single image ads and document ads carry most B2B programs. Single image ads are the cheapest way to test whether your message and audience are right, and document ads paired with a Lead Gen Form usually produce the lowest cost per lead, because they trade something genuinely useful for contact details.

How do LinkedIn campaign objectives affect which ad types I can run? You choose the objective first, and it gates everything else. Brand awareness opens the widest format list, while video views accepts video ads only. Lead generation runs single image, carousel, video, event, document, and article and newsletter ads with a form attached, plus both Sponsored Messaging formats.

What is the difference between message ads and conversation ads? A message ad delivers one message with one call-to-action button. A conversation ad offers several buttons, each of which can open a landing page, a Lead Gen Form, or another message with more choices. Both are billed per send.

Are LinkedIn message ads available in Europe? LinkedIn supports Sponsored Messaging targeting in the European Economic Area and Switzerland, but only members who have opted in to receive these ads in their inbox will get them. Plan for reduced reach if a large share of your audience sits in those markets.

What are LinkedIn thought leader ads? Thought leader ads promote a post published by an individual instead of the company page. They need the creator's permission, a public post, and a profile showing the person's full name. They support brand awareness and engagement, and video posts also support video views.

What are LinkedIn Connected TV ads? Connected TV ads deliver video to streaming TV viewers using LinkedIn's professional audience data. They run only under the brand awareness objective with the Connected TV toggle on, target the United States and Canada with English as the audience language, and use a video asset meeting LinkedIn's Connected TV specifications, with 15 or 30 seconds recommended.

Do Lead Gen Forms produce better leads? They usually produce cheaper leads, because the form pre-fills with the member's profile data and skips the landing page. That same ease means some submissions are only lightly interested, so measure the format on qualified conversations rather than on the number of form fills.

How much do LinkedIn ads cost? Cost per click typically runs $5 to $8 globally and $8 to $10 in the US, cost per thousand impressions between $30 and $50, and cost per lead between $75 and $400. Message ads are billed per send at roughly $0.26 to $0.50. The technical minimum is $10 per day per campaign.

How many LinkedIn ad formats should I run at once? Four or five is plenty for most established B2B companies, and each one should map to a distinct objective and a real asset you already have. Running more formats than you have content to feed spreads the budget thin and makes the results harder to read.