Create live event ads in Campaign Manager

Last updated: 2 weeks ago

As an advertiser, you can use live event ads to help maximize registrations, live views, and lifetime views for your company Page's LinkedIn Live Events. With live event ads, your targeted audience will see a different ad experience before, during, and after the event.

Important to know

  • Live events ads aren’t a new ad format; they provide exclusive features for live events hosted on LinkedIn under the existing Sponsored Content event ad format.
  • Live event ads are currently only available for the Classic ad campaign type with the brand awareness, engagement, or website visits objectives.

This article walks you through the steps required to help you achieve the following goals for your live event ad:

  • Maximize registrations (pre-event) and lifetime views (post-event).
  • Maximize live views (during event).

Here's a tip

You can create a new live event ad or sponsor existing posts with live event URLs from your company Page to increase event registrations.

Prerequisites

Before using a live event ad, ensure the following prerequisites are completed.

LinkedIn Live Event

  • Set up your event with LinkedIn Live as the event format.
    • You need to set up your event with LinkedIn Live in order for members to see a live video in the ad during your event and a video replay in the ad after the event. If you create the event without selecting to use LinkedIn Live, members will see the static event ad experience before, during, and after the event.
  • Optional: Add a registration form if you’re hosting your event on behalf of a LinkedIn company Page.
  • Invite speakers for your event and link their speaker profiles.
  • Add a background image and event details for your event page.

Permissions for LinkedIn Live Event and ad campaigns

Confirm that you have:

  • LinkedIn Live access. 
  • Campaign Manager access or higher on the ad account.
  • A LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page associated with your ad account.
  • Super admin, content admin, or Sponsored Content poster access on the LinkedIn Page.
  • If you’re creating your first LinkedIn Live ad campaign, your campaign must be created after your LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page receives LinkedIn Live access.

Streaming a LinkedIn Live event through a third-party

Create and run a test event 

  • As a LinkedIn Page admin, you can create test events to familiarize yourself with LinkedIn events. We recommend running an end-to-end test for LinkedIn Live, in particular, to learn how to set up the connection between your stream and a scheduled event, and adjust your encoder settings without broadcasting to your audience. 

Maximize registrations and lifetime views using live event ads

Live event ads can help you maximize registrations and drive event discovery with your target audience, as well as maximize the total views of your live video, regardless of when the views take place. Because live event ads provide your targeted audience with a different ad experience before, during, and after an event, you can create one Classic campaign for end-to-end promotion or three separate Classic campaigns for each event stage (before, during, after).

To maximize registrations or lifetime views using a single live event ad campaign:

  1. Go to your LinkedIn Page.

  2. Create an event using LinkedIn Live so that you can livestream your event.

    1. Select Online as the event type and LinkedIn Live as the event format.
    2. Optional: To maximize attendees and views, ensure the Use a LinkedIn registration form option is unselected. Using a LinkedIn registration form will require that members complete the form to view the event before, during, and after the event.

  3. Create a new Classic ad campaign with the following variables:

    1. Select brand awareness, website visits, or engagement as the objective.
    2. Select your target audience.
    3. Select Event ad as the ad format.
    4. Select the budget, schedule, optimization goal, and bidding strategy. Keep in mind:
      1. To maximize responses and views, set a campaign start date before your event and campaign end date after your event. It’s recommended you run the ads for at least two weeks before the event and at least several days after the event.
      2. Ad delivery will pace your campaign budget over the course of your campaign with the intention of spending all of the budget by 11:59 PM UTC on your campaign end date. This means that if you set your campaign end time to earlier in the day, for example, 8:00 PM UTC, you will likely have leftover budget, as ad delivery will be pacing to spend the budget by the end of the day. This ad delivery pacing does not apply to accelerated delivery.
    5. Select maximum delivery as the bidding strategy.

  4. Create a new or use an existing event ad in Campaign Manager.

    1. Optional: You can name the ad and add introductory text. The same introductory text is used in the ads shown before the event, during the event, and after the event. It’s recommended that you either add introductory text that is relevant for all three stages, create three Classic live event ad campaigns (one for each stage), or not add any introductory text.
    2. Copy and paste the URL for the LinkedIn Live Event you created earlier into the LinkedIn event URL.
    3. Preview the ad on the right side of the page.
      1. Ad preview capabilities by device type and event stage (before, during, after) are currently limited to static previews, for example, they do not show live video.
    4. Review your ad and add it to your campaign.

  5. Launch your campaign.

Results

  • After you launch a campaign, your ads will be reviewed. If approved, your ads will display impressions based on your campaign settings.
  • You can review the metrics specific to your live event ads on the Campaign Manager reporting dashboard.

Maximize live views using live event ads 

Live event ads can help you deliver an engaging event livestream or video replay directly to members' feeds to amplify awareness and views. Because live event ads provide your targeted audience with a different ad experience before, during, and after an event, you can create one Classic campaign for end-to-end promotion or three separate Classic campaigns for each event stage (before, during, after). 

Important to know

• To maximize live views, it’s recommended you use accelerated delivery to help drive members to view your live event at a particular point in time. With accelerated delivery, you can maximize reach and delivery during an event as it works to deliver your campaign budget to your audience as quickly as possible.
• There are two options for running live event ad campaigns with accelerated delivery. The first option is to create three Classic live event ad campaigns, one for each stage, using maximum delivery for the pre-and post-event stages and accelerated delivery during the event. The second option is to create two Classic live event ad campaigns, one for the pre-and post-event stages using maximum delivery and one for during the live event using accelerated delivery.

Important to know

The following procedure is for creating three Classic live event ad campaigns, once for each event stage. Repeat the procedure for each ad campaign, noting the slight variable changes for each.

To maximize live views using three live event ad campaigns for each event stage:

  1. Go to your LinkedIn Page.

  2. Create an event using LinkedIn Live so that you can livestream your event.

    1. Select Online as the event type and LinkedIn Live as the event format.
    2. Optional: To maximize attendees and views, ensure the Use a LinkedIn registration form option is unselected. Using a LinkedIn registration form will require that members complete the form to view the event before, during, and after the event.

  3. Create a new Classic ad campaign with the following variables:

    1. Name your ad campaign so you can easily identify which event stage it relates to.
    2. For the pre-event and post-event campaigns, select brand awareness, website visits, or engagement as the objective.
    3. For the during event campaign, select website visits or engagement as the objective. This is to ensure you can enable accelerated delivery.

  4. Select your target audience.

  5. Select Event ad as the ad format.

  6. Select the budget, schedule, optimization goal, and bidding strategy.

    1. For the pre-event and post-event campaigns, keep in mind:
      1. To maximize responses and views, set a campaign start date before your event and campaign end date after your event. It’s recommended you run the ads for at least two weeks before the event and at least several days after the event.
      2. Ad delivery will pace your campaign budget over the course of your campaign with the intention of spending all of the budget by 11:59 PM UTC on your campaign end date. This means that if you set your campaign end time to earlier in the day, for example, 8:00 PM UTC, you will likely have leftover budget, as ad delivery will be pacing to spend the budget by the end of the day. This ad delivery pacing does not apply to accelerated delivery.
      3. Select maximum delivery as the bidding strategy.
    2. For the during event campaign that uses accelerated delivery:
      1. Select Lifetime budget.
      2. Your campaign must run for a minimum of 1 hour and can’t be longer than 24 hours.
      3. Select your optimization goal.
      4. Select manual bidding as the bidding strategy.
      5. Select the Enable accelerated delivery checkbox and the Enable bid adjustment for high-value clicks checkbox.

    Important to know

    Accelerated delivery must be enabled when you start creating the campaign. You can’t create a draft campaign and then enable accelerated delivery for that campaign at a later time.

  7. Create a new or using an existing event ad in Campaign Manager.

    1. Optional: You can name the ad and add introductory text. The same introductory text is used in the ads shown before the event, during the event, and after the event. As you’re creating three separate campaigns, it’s recommended that you add introductory text that is relevant for all three stages.

  8. Launch your ad campaign and repeat this procedure for the other event stages.

Related tasks

 Learn more about LinkedIn Live Events and live event ads

 Learn more about ad campaigns