paid ads · playbook
LinkedIn Ads report template: weekly and monthly reporting
A copy-able LinkedIn Ads report template, plus how to pull the data in Campaign Manager: exports, breakdowns, demographics and what weekly vs monthly reports need.
Key takeaways
- A useful LinkedIn Ads report answers three questions: what did we spend, what did it produce, and what are we changing next.
- Pull data from the Advertise page in Campaign Manager: set the time range, choose columns, then Export a CSV by report type with a daily, monthly or all-time breakdown.
- Weekly reports watch pacing, delivery and creative fatigue; monthly reports judge cost per lead, lead quality and pipeline against the prior period.
- Always include a demographics read and a click versus view conversion split; they are where LinkedIn reporting most often misleads.
- End every report with decisions and owners, not just numbers.
A LinkedIn Ads report is a recurring summary of spend, delivery, engagement, conversions and lead quality for your LinkedIn campaigns, with commentary on what changed and what you will do next. The template below gives you the exact structure for a weekly and a monthly LinkedIn Ads report, as a copy-able table layout, plus the Campaign Manager steps to pull every number in it. The test of a good report is simple: someone who reads only the first section should know whether LinkedIn is working and what is changing this week.
Naming. Campaign Manager’s hierarchy is campaign → ad set → ad. Budget, bid and targeting live on the ad set, so the ad set is the main unit of reporting.
What should a LinkedIn Ads report include?
Every report, weekly or monthly, needs six blocks:
- Summary: three to five sentences on results versus target and the main decision.
- KPI table: spend, delivery, engagement, conversions and cost, current period versus previous.
- Breakdown by ad set: which ad sets drove results and which wasted money.
- Creative read: which ads to keep, refresh or pause.
- Audience read: who actually saw and clicked, from the Professional Demographics report.
- Actions: changes made since the last report, changes proposed, owners and dates.
Monthly reports add lead quality and pipeline from your CRM, because that is the only place LinkedIn’s value in B2B becomes visible.
How to build a LinkedIn Ads report in Campaign Manager
All reporting starts from the Advertise page in the left menu of Campaign Manager. Per LinkedIn’s reporting help:
1. Set the level, time range and comparison
- Use the tabs at the top to switch between campaigns, ad sets and ads.
- Set the Time range (top right): pick dates or a preset such as Last month or Last quarter.
- Use the Compare dropdown for Previous period, or for ad sets, Industry benchmark and Self benchmark (both over the last 90 days). Green and red percentages show the change.
2. Choose your columns
Use the Columns dropdown to switch metric sets, or choose Customize columns to build your own view. LinkedIn allows up to 10 custom column views per user, and you can reuse them for CSV exports. A reporting view should include at least: Spend, Impressions, Clicks, Clicks to Landing Page, Average CTR, Average CPC, Average CPM, Conversions, Cost per conversion, Leads, Cost per lead, Frequency (if available for your objective), and video or messaging metrics where relevant.
3. Add a breakdown
The Breakdown dropdown splits the current view by:
- Conversions (by conversion type on the ad set)
- On/Off Network (LinkedIn vs LinkedIn Audience Network)
- Carousel (per card)
- Impression device type
- Placement (feed, standalone and in-stream Audience Network)
The On/Off Network breakdown is the one most reports skip and should not: Audience Network delivery can look cheap while producing low-quality traffic.
4. Pull professional demographics
From the Advertise page, select Professional Demographics, then use the Display dropdown to pick a facet: job function, job title, company, company industry, job seniority, company size, location, country/region, county or DMA. LinkedIn’s help notes three caveats to put in your report footnotes:
- Data can take 24-48 hours to appear, so end reporting windows two days ago.
- Values are approximate for privacy, generally within three impressions, clicks or conversions of actual. Use full periods rather than summing daily numbers.
- Bars only appear when there is enough data per facet, so small ad sets show gaps.
5. Export the CSVs
Click Export (top right of the Advertise page), choose a Report Type, choose a Time breakdown (Daily, Monthly or All) and export. The report types LinkedIn lists:
| Report type | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Ad set performance | The KPI table and ad set breakdown |
| Ad performance | The creative read |
| Audience Network ad set / ad performance | On vs off network quality check |
| Professional demographics | The audience read (no time breakdown) |
| Conversion performance / Conversion ad performance | Conversions by type, click vs view |
| Leads | Lead Gen Form responses (ad set level) |
| Conversation ad CTA performance | Which conversation ad buttons get clicked |
| Placements ad set / ad performance | Feed vs Audience Network placements |
Not every report type is available at every level; LinkedIn shows only the ones valid for the level you are viewing. Some dashboard columns, such as Key results and Cost per result, are not included in exports, so compute those yourself in the sheet.
6. Join CRM data (monthly)
Platform conversions tell you what LinkedIn counted. Lead quality lives in your CRM. Either join exported leads to CRM stages by email or campaign UTM, or use LinkedIn’s Revenue Attribution Report, which connects a Salesforce, Dynamics 365 or HubSpot CRM to Business Manager (HubSpot through LinkedIn’s CRM Sync app) to report pipeline, revenue won and return on ad spend. LinkedIn notes data can take up to 72 hours to appear in the report in Business Manager, and its HubSpot setup help adds up to another 24-48 hours before it shows in Campaign Manager.
Weekly vs monthly LinkedIn Ads reporting
| Weekly report | Monthly report | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Catch problems early | Judge performance and reallocate budget |
| Window | Last 7 days, with 28-day context | Last full month vs prior month |
| Focus | Pacing, delivery, rejected ads, CTR and frequency trend, conversion tracking still firing | Cost per lead, lead-to-MQL/SQL rate, cost per SQL, pipeline, demographics |
| Decisions | Pause, refresh, fix | Budget shifts, new tests, audience and offer changes |
| Length | One screen | Two to three pages |
Weekly numbers are noisy at typical B2B volumes, so avoid judging cost per lead on a single week unless spend is large. The LinkedIn Ads campaign review framework covers the deeper weekly, monthly and quarterly audit behind these reports.
LinkedIn Ads report template
Copy this into a doc, sheet or wiki page. Replace bracketed text. Keep the order: summary first, decisions last.
# LinkedIn Ads report: [Account name], [period, e.g. Oct 1-31, 2026]
Prepared by: [name] · Data pulled: [date] · Window ends: [date, 2 days before pull]
Currency: [USD] · Attribution: [click window / view window]
## 1. Summary
- Result vs target: [e.g. 38 demo requests vs 40 target; cost per lead $212 vs $250 max]
- What drove it: [one sentence]
- Biggest problem: [one sentence]
- Decision this period: [one sentence]
## 2. KPIs
| Metric | This period | Previous | Change | Target |
|---------------------------|-------------|----------|--------|--------|
| Spend | | | | |
| Impressions | | | | |
| Reach / avg. frequency | | | | |
| Clicks | | | | |
| Clicks to landing page | | | | |
| CTR | | | | |
| Landing page CTR | | | | |
| Avg. CPC | | | | |
| Avg. CPM | | | | |
| Conversions (click) | | | | |
| Conversions (view) | | | | |
| Cost per conversion (click)| | | | |
| Leads (Lead Gen Forms) | | | | |
| Form completion rate | | | | |
| Cost per lead | | | | |
| MQLs / SQLs (monthly) | | | | |
| Cost per SQL (monthly) | | | | |
| Pipeline created (monthly)| | | | |
## 3. Ad sets
| Ad set | Objective | Bidding | Spend | Leads/Conv. | Cost per lead | CTR | Verdict |
|--------|-----------|---------|-------|-------------|---------------|-----|---------|
| | | | | | | | Keep / Fix / Pause |
Delivery notes: [under-pacing, learning resets, Audience Network share from On/Off Network breakdown]
## 4. Creative
| Ad | Format | Impressions | CTR | Frequency | Conv. | Status |
|----|--------|-------------|-----|-----------|-------|--------|
| | | | | | | Keep / Refresh / Pause |
Fatigue watch: [ads with falling CTR and rising frequency]
## 5. Audience (Professional Demographics)
- Top job functions by impressions: [ ]
- Seniority mix: [% Senior/Manager+ vs Entry]
- Top companies / industries: [ ]
- Off-target spend: [e.g. 18% of impressions to Entry seniority; propose exclusion]
## 6. Actions
Done since last report:
- [change] · [ad set id] · [date] · [result so far]
Proposed:
- [change] · [why, with numbers] · [expected impact] · [owner] · [due]
Open questions / tracking issues:
- [ ]Commentary prompts that make the report useful
Numbers without interpretation get skimmed. For each section, answer one question:
- Summary: If we did nothing different next period, what would happen?
- KPIs: Which change is real and which is noise? (Say so if volumes are too small to tell.)
- Ad sets: Where would the next $1,000 do the most good?
- Creative: What is the oldest ad still running, and is it still pulling its weight?
- Audience: Are we paying to reach people who will never buy?
- Actions: Did last period’s changes deliver what we expected?
Common LinkedIn Ads reporting mistakes
- Reporting CTR as the headline. It is a diagnostic. See LinkedIn Ads CTR benchmarks for what to pair it with.
- Blending click and view conversions. View-through conversions can make cost per conversion look much better than it is. Report them in separate rows.
- Using Clicks instead of Clicks to Landing Page. LinkedIn’s Clicks column counts chargeable clicks as defined by the objective, which for some objectives includes clicks to your LinkedIn Page and follow clicks.
- Summing daily demographic exports. Privacy approximation compounds; export the full period instead.
- Comparing immature windows. With long conversion windows, last week keeps gaining conversions. Compare equally aged periods.
- No cost context. Always show spend next to results; see LinkedIn Ads cost for what is normal.
- No actions section. A report that changes nothing is a dashboard screenshot.
Automating the weekly report
GTM Hacker’s paid ads reviews include a LinkedIn Ads Campaign Reporter and weekly reviews of each tracked campaign. Each review produces a scored report with KPIs computed from platform data, ranked proposed changes and follow-up checks on last week’s changes, covering most of the template above. Spend-affecting and irreversible changes always wait for a person to approve them; low-risk ones can be auto-approved, and auto-approval can be turned off per campaign.