LinkedIn Carousel Ads: What They Are, What to Use Them For, Ad Specs & Best Practices

When it comes to LinkedIn ad formats, there’s not much you can’t do. From single image to video to message, carousel, text and conversation – the world’s your oyster! One of the most popular formats are LinkedIn carousel ads.

In this in-depth post we’ll cover what carousel ads are, why you should care about them and how you can start using them more effectively to freshen up your marketing efforts. Plus, we include the updated ad specs you should be following to get the best results! Sit back and get ready to soak up our carousel knowledge.

What are they? 

Unlike a single image ad where you’re limited to 1 banner visual and 1 set of ad copy – a carousel ad allows you to use up to 10 swipeable “slides.” Each of these “slides” contain a different visual and headline copy. 

Carousel ads appear on the news feed and your company LinkedIn page – across all devices and platforms, including mobile. They are most commonly used for brand awareness, website visits or lead generation objectives.

Why use them? 

1. When compared to the stock-standard sponsored image ad – a carousel ad gives you more space to exercise better storytelling. 

2. There’s also more space to promote your offer. Whether you’re using your carousel to display various features of a single service, a series of individual products or to call out key insights from a report – you can do much more with a single ad. This means there’s more opportunity for your prospects to find something that appeals to them.

3. Perhaps most importantly for you metric-driven digital marketers, carousel ads typically have higher CTRs and engagement then other ad formats. 75% of advertisers who beta tested Sponsored Content, saw a lift in both metrics when compared to the single image format. 

How to use them 

We’ve seen carousel ads work best when used to showcase products, tell your brand’s story, display customer journeys or share key insights (from a whitepaper, conference etc.). While the exact way you use them depends on your objectives and the nature of your business – it’s important that you make the extra ad space and highly interactive format work for you. And as an absolute non-negotiable, you need to include a clear call-to-action button and link on the final card. 

Ad specs 

• Introductory text: Under 150 characters to steer clear of truncation (note – we’d typically push this down to 140 to be on the safe side)
• Cards: minimum 2 and maximum 10 cards.
• Max file size: 10 MB
• Max image dimension: 6012 x 6012px
• Available media formats: JPG, PNG and GIF
• Headline character limits: 45-character limit on ads leading to a destination URL; 30-character limit on lead gen form ads 

Start acing your carousel ads!

With these tips, tricks and specs at your disposal – there’s simply no excuse not to nail your carousel ads from this point forward. Need more help creating CTR-elevating carousels or any other aspect of your LinkedIn campaign management? Our LinkedIn optimisation tool, Campainless is packed with best-practice tips and reminders, ad quality alerts & more to keep you on top of your LinkedIn ad game.