Platforms in this story
In short
- LinkedIn targets on professional attributes (company, job function, seniority, skills) and on your own lists; an audience must reach at least 300 comptes membres↗ to serve.
- The platform suggests far more than that floor: 50,000 comptes membres↗ in general, 300,000 comptes membres↗ for Sponsored Content and Sponsored Messaging.
- Minimum budgets are published in US dollars: $10↗ a day to start, $100↗ lifetime budget for a new campaign.
- In the EEA and Switzerland, members choose whether to connect to Marketing Solutions: some audiences may be smaller than elsewhere.
LinkedIn Ads is the platform where you buy a job title, a company or a seniority level rather than an interest. It is also one of the most expensive to test blind. Here is how I read the official documentation: what the platform states plainly, what it leaves open, and what I would check in an account before proposing a budget to a B2B advertiser or an agency.
300comptes membres
Minimum audience to serve
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions · checked October 13, 2026↗
50,000comptes membres
Audience size suggested by LinkedIn
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions · checked October 13, 2026↗
$10
Minimum daily budget (USD)
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions · checked October 13, 2026↗
180jours
Longest website retargeting window
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions · checked October 13, 2026↗
What targeting options does LinkedIn Ads offer?
The help page "Targeting options for LinkedIn Ads" groups criteria into families↗. For a B2B advertiser, three matter:
- Company: category, connections, followers, growth rate, industry, name, revenue and company size.
- Job experience: job title, job function, job seniority, member skills and years of experience.
- Audiences: Matched Audiences (your company or contact lists, retargeting) and predictive audiences, built from a Lead Gen Form, a list, conversions or a retargeting audience.
The same page also lists location, demographics (age, gender), devices, education (degrees, fields of study, schools) and interests and traits (groups, interests, member traits).
Two construction rules to know. According to the best-practices page, adding attributes to the "include" section widens the audience, while adding them to "narrow" or "exclude" shrinks it↗. And the technical floor is 300 comptes membres↗ for an ad set.
That floor is not the right target. On another help page, LinkedIn suggests 50,000 comptes membres↗ "to drive results", then 300,000 comptes membres↗ for Sponsored Content and Sponsored Messaging. Both figures appear on the same page; I give both rather than pick one. My reasoning: a rare job function in a narrow region will fall under these thresholds, and the fix is to widen by function or industry rather than stack filters.
How do Matched Audiences work?
For a company list (account-based targeting), the documentation sets four limits: 300 lignes↗ for the upload to succeed, the same number of matched member accounts to serve, a maximum size of 300,000 entreprises↗, and CSV files or data from API partners; changing the template headers causes an error↗.
For website retargeting, LinkedIn offers four lookback windows, up to 180 jours↗. The Insight Tag must be on the pages, and the help page warns it should not be installed on pages that collect or contain sensitive data, for example health or financial services aimed at consumers. An audience can take up to 48 hours to process↗.
What does Europe change for targeting?
LinkedIn writes it in its documentation: since February 2024↗, members in the EEA and Switzerland choose whether to connect to Marketing Solutions. The stated consequence: advertisers who use attributes built on inferred data (age range, gender, product or service interests) and engagement retargeting for events and company pages "may experience smaller audience sizes"↗. The same page notes that reported conversions may change, because LinkedIn models them.
I found no official figure on how large the reduction is. What I take from it for a European account: prefer declared attributes (company, job function, seniority) over inferred ones, and note the audience size shown in Campaign Manager before promising a volume to a client.
Which format: Sponsored Content, Message Ads or Document Ads?
Sponsored Content covers the native ads in the feed: single image, video, carousel and document. For the carousel, the specifications page asks for a maximum of 10 cartes↗ and a minimum of two cards, with a file of 10 MB at most and a recommended 1080 by 1080 pixel image↗.
Document Ads: PPT, PPTX, DOC, DOCX or PDF files up to 100 Mo↗ and 300 pages↗; a Document Ad with a lead generation objective only accepts PDF↗. The headline can run to 200 characters, but LinkedIn advises 70 to avoid it being shortened.
Message Ads: a subject of up to 60 characters, a body of up to 1,500 caractères↗ (with a maximum of 10 emojis), a 20-character button and a banner of 300 by 250 pixels at most; the "Not interested" button is added automatically↗.
Conversation Ads: an intro message of up to 8,000 caractères↗, five buttons per message (50 per conversation), buttons of 25 characters at most↗.
My reasoning, to be read as such: Message and Conversation Ads address an already precise audience and need copy written for one person, not for a segment; I keep them for a list of target accounts. The Document Ad suits high-stakes content (a study, a guide) when you need a format that reads inside the feed. In the pages I read, LinkedIn publishes no average result per format, so I give none.
What minimum budgets does LinkedIn publish?
On its budget best-practices page, LinkedIn writes that the minimum daily budget to start is $10↗ for any format, and the minimum lifetime budget for a new, inactive campaign is $100↗. Once the campaign launches, that minimum becomes $10↗ multiplied by the number of scheduled days. The platform suggests $25↗ a day for new advertisers, with the equivalent in other currencies↗. All these amounts are published in dollars: I did not find the exact floor for a euro account, and I would check it in Campaign Manager.
Two useful caveats. First, the daily budget is not a cap: the help page on budgets states that actual daily spend "might be up to 100%↗ higher" than the amount set↗. Second, LinkedIn recommends a lifetime budget with lifetime pacing to get the most from your budget. My reasoning: at $10↗ a day, a suggested audience of tens of thousands of people is only reached in small doses; these floors let you open an account, not learn anything reliable.
How does this platform compare with Meta Ads?
LinkedIn and Meta do not compete on the same criterion. LinkedIn lets you pick a job title, a function or a company from profile attributes, at the price of a narrower audience and an audience floor to watch. Meta makes you reason differently: the Meta Ads in autumn 2026 guide covers what changes in attribution, creative diversity and location fees, three topics that weigh on how you read results when you compare the two platforms side by side. This guide does not detail Meta's targeting; the comparison I make here (declared professional targeting versus targeting by behavioral signals) is my reading, not a sourced claim about Meta.