LinkedIn profile targeting in Microsoft Advertising

This is a bid layer on traffic you already buy, not an audience you can go out and purchase. Microsoft matches its own signed-in signal against LinkedIn profile data and exposes three dimensions, company, industry and job function, on search, shopping and audience campaigns. Across the B2B accounts we run, a usable LinkedIn signal attaches to somewhere between a tenth and a third of impressions. That is enough to move bids with and nowhere near enough to build a campaign on, and the gap between those two statements is where most of the money is lost. Bid-only first, for six weeks: We start every layer at a zero percent modifier in bid-only mode, so segments accumulate observation data without changing what serves. Nothing gets a modifier until it has around 25 conversions of its own, because a cost-per-acquisition difference computed on eight conversions is a coin flip you are about to bet the head term on. Target-and-bid, where the campaign only serves to the segment, we apply in one situation: a compliance reason to restrict who sees the ad. Applying it for performance collapses volume and starves the bid strategy that was doing the actual work. What the three dimensions really are: Job function, not job title. It is a short list of broad functions, so a treasurer, a controller and an accounts payable clerk are one object. Industry uses LinkedIn's own taxonomy, which does not map onto SNI or NACE codes, and Financial Services contains both a retail bank and a crypto brokerage. Company targeting takes a list, and a tight account-based list falls under the reach floor and simply never serves, which reads in the interface as zero impressions rather than as an error. If your buyer is defined by a title, this is the wrong instrument and LinkedIn's own Campaign Manager is the right one. We will tell you that and decline the work rather than sell a layer that cannot see your buyer. Where it pays: On head terms with mixed intent and a wide value spread. A query like custody solution is typed by a student, a competitor and a treasury lead at a bank inside the same hour, and they all cost the same click. The modifier is the only mechanism that lets you pay the treasury lead's price without abandoning the term. Exchanges selling institutional custody, B2B fintech, and developer tooling with a procurement buyer are where we have seen the layer hold up over a full quarter rather than for a fortnight. Where it does not: Consumer catalogues. We will not sell this into a beauty or DTC account. Industry and function tell you nothing about whether someone buys a serum, the matched share of consumer traffic is smaller than in B2B, and the layer becomes an expensive way to bid up people who happen to have a LinkedIn profile. We run beauty accounts ourselves and we do not use this on them. Not included: LinkedIn Ads inside Campaign Manager, which is a different platform and a different engagement. Also excluded: account list building, sales enablement, lead scoring design, and any promise about pipeline quality, which depends on your sales team rather than on our bid modifiers. Not for: Accounts spending under roughly 6,000 EUR a month on Microsoft search, where a modifier applied to thin traffic is superstition presented as strategy. Companies whose buyer cannot be described in a function or an industry. And anyone who wants the layer switched on in week one because a competitor mentioned it.