Looking for a way to keep your LinkedIn content fresh and interesting? The recent announcement of carousel ads in this channel will do just that.

Earlier this year, LinkedIn launched carousel ads as an option for Sponsored Content ads. Here is what you need to know to get started with carousel ads and to make sure you’re successful.

What are LinkedIn Carousel Ads?

This ad type features a swipeable series of cards within a single ad unit to help advertisers tell a story. Currently, carousel ads can be created to send visitors to your content or website OR to collect leads by utilizing LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms.

Carousel Ads have their own set of guidelines separate from regular sponsored content. Here are the specs you should look to follow:

• You must use between 2 and 10 cards per ad.
• The entire ad is limited to 255 characters. Similar to other ad types in LinkedIn, your intro text may be truncated on mobile devices if greater than 150 characters.
• Specs for the individual cards:
  • Recommended 1080×1080 pixels with a 1:1 ratio.
  • Formats: .jpg, .png, .gif (non-animated)
  • Headline text for each image card is a max of two lines before being truncated. 45 character limit for ads leading to a landing page and 30 characters for carousel ads being used with a lead gen form.
• Only 1 lead gen form can be utilized per carousel ad (so if you want to A/B test the performance of your forms, you’ll need to set up an old-fashioned A/B test).
• Static images only – Video format isn’t currently available.
• The LinkedIn Audience Network is not currently available for this ad type.

Let’s walk through creating these ads.

How to Create LinkedIn Carousel Ads

Log into your account and click the “Create Campaign” button. Select Sponsored Content.

Name your campaign, select your campaign group and language. Click next.

Select whether you want to utilize landing pages or lead gen forms. For this example, we will go through how to send folks to your landing page or content (I’ll show you lead gen forms in just a bit). Click Next.

Select the carousel ad format and click next.

On the next page click “Create carousel ad”.

Name your carousel ad, write the introduction text, and enter your landing page URL. One thing I really like is the ability to click “Use Main URL as destination for all cards” and the landing page you entered will be auto-inserted. Very handy.

Now it’s time to upload your cards. Upload your image. If your image doesn’t meet specs you’ll see an error message like the one below my first card. Enter your card description. Add as many cards as you’d like (up to 1o) and enter the description text. Click Save.

On the next page, click the checkbox and select “Sponsor selected carousel”. (This is the same process when setting up other Sponsored Content in LinkedIn).

Setup the rest of your campaign with targeting (the instructions are the same as they are for InMail campaigns which I wrote about recently) and make sure to setup your conversion tracking.

Lead Gen Forms + Carousel Ads

I recently wrote about LinkedIn Lead Gen Ads tracking tips. If you haven’t setup Lead Gen Forms before, make sure to check out this tutorial before proceeding.

At the beginning of the setup, make sure to select “Collect lead using lead gen forms.”

Create your carousel ad using the instructions above. After setting up your ad, you’ll select your Call-to-Action and Form.

Once you have selected your lead gen form, you can save your ad by clicking next.

Tips for Making the Most of Carousel Ads

A while back, we wrote about how to use Facebook carousel ads for storytelling. There are many takeaways that can be applied to LinkedIn:

• Consider utilizing testimonials, ratings or feedback in your carousel. With B2B advertising, letting potential customers know how your product or solution could improve their workdays could be powerful.
• Show how to use the product through a series of screenshots or product images.
• Tell your brand story to folks who have already visited your site.

As of publication, you have to download a report to see the performance of these ads by card. LinkedIn says that seeing this data in the interface will be possible in the coming months.

We hope to see carousel video ad capabilities in LinkedIn soon, but we are pretty excited about this new ad type.

Have you tested carousel ads in LinkedIn? What were your results? We’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below!