LinkedIn Generative AI in New Ads: What to Know

It seems like every ad platform is scrambling to offer Generative AI functionality. LinkedIn recently joined the fray in announcing their plan to test launching AI copy in new ad formats – what they call ‘AI Copy Suggestions,’ which they believe will help improve audience targeting, engagement, and ROI. 

AI Copy Suggestions will generate headlines and text copy for ads based on your company’s LinkedIn page. It’ll give you five options that you can edit and apply to your campaign. This is only being tested with a limited number of advertisers in North America, but they plan to expand further in the coming months. 

From LinkedIn:

The benefits of AI Copy Suggestions

The biggest benefit the feature offers advertisers is the ability to produce high-quality ad content with little manual labor beyond editing. Less time for writing means more time for targeting, bidding, and doing advanced work like offline data integration. 

Testing recommendations

I recommend testing this with sponsored content ads. The audiences in the LinkedIn news feed are naturally more engaged, which can give you a good barometer to determine the relevancy of the ads being AI generated and whether they will work for you.

To reduce ad fatigue, it’s important to refresh native ads fairly frequently. Being able to refer to AI generative copy will make the ongoing task more efficient over time. 

Note that the AI algorithm also takes into account the ad’s campaign goals, objectives, and targeting settings when creating the most relevant and tailored copy. Make sure to update audiences according to each campaign and select the most relevant goal and objective to help the copy algorithm do its best work. 

Recommendations to optimize the feature

Ensure your LinkedIn company page is as up to date as possible: this includes updating your “My Company” and “About” tabs, updating posts more frequently, etc. to provide AI with the most current information. I recommend setting a monthly cadence of page and post optimization in general; it’s especially important to follow this if you’re planning to use AI Copy Suggestions.

Last, remember that any Generative AI (at least for now!) will only work with its defined input. This means anything that isn’t on your LinkedIn page won’t be part of your copy considerations. These ads should be considered part of a larger campaign, but they’re not the place to test things like new messaging and positioning. Approach them for what they are – a chance to save resources, not transform performance – and make sure you’re editing the output closely.

If you have any questions about how we’re using AI in our campaigns, we’re always up for a chat!