LinkedIn conversation ads: specs, examples and setup (2026)

LinkedIn conversation ads are Sponsored Messaging ads delivered to a member’s LinkedIn inbox, where each message carries up to five call-to-action buttons and every button can lead to another message, a landing page or a Lead Gen Form. Instead of one pitch and one link, the reader chooses a path (“show me the benchmark,” “I’d rather talk to someone,” “not now”), so one ad can serve several intents. They are billed per send, appear on desktop and mobile when members are active, and work best on warm B2B audiences that already know your name.

Below: current specs, when to use the format, two illustrative example flows, setup steps, creative rules and the metrics to judge it by. If you are choosing between this and the older single-CTA format, read LinkedIn message ads too; for the full format menu see the complete LinkedIn Ads guide.

What are LinkedIn conversation ads?

A conversation ad is a branching message thread sent from a real person’s LinkedIn profile (the “sender”) on behalf of your company. The structure:

Intro message with up to five buttons, one of which is a required “Not Interested” button that LinkedIn adds automatically.
Response messages that appear when a member clicks a button, each with its own buttons, up to 50 buttons across the whole conversation.
End points: a URL on your site, a Lead Gen Form, or another message.

LinkedIn’s help center lists the supported objectives as brand awareness, engagement, website visits, website conversions and lead generation. Sponsored Messaging is charged on a cost-per-send basis, so there are no chargeable clicks.

LinkedIn conversation ad specs (October 2026)

From LinkedIn’s “Conversation ads advertising specifications” help article and the Conversation Ads page of the LinkedIn Ads Guide.

Spec	Requirement
Ad name (optional)	Up to 255 characters, internal only
Sender	A LinkedIn member approved as sender; sender requests go to your 1st-degree connections
Subject (optional)	Up to 60 characters including macros; may be truncated. If blank, the first message shows in the inbox preview
Intro message	Up to 8,000 characters; up to 10 emojis; basic rich text (bold, italics, bullets) counts toward the limit. LinkedIn shows a recommendation to shorten above 500 characters
Response messages	Up to 8,000 characters each; up to 10 emojis per message layer
CTA button text	Up to 25 characters
CTA buttons	5 per message, 50 per conversation; “Not Interested” is required and counts as one of the 5 on the intro message
Website button	At least one CTA must send people to your website
Image (optional)	JPG or PNG, up to 5 MB, 250 x 250 px
Banner (optional, desktop only)	Up to 300 x 250 px, JPG or PNG, up to 2 MB
Custom footer and terms (optional)	Up to 20,000 characters
Destination URL	http:// or https://, up to 2,000 characters
Macros	First name, last name, company, job title, industry; fall back to generic text (“LinkedIn Member,” “your company”) if the member has ad personalization off
Billing	Cost per send
Draft with AI	Only when the ad set language is English

Regional rule: LinkedIn supports targeting the EEA and Switzerland for conversation and message ads, but only members there who opted in to Sponsored Messaging in their inbox receive them. Expect much smaller delivery in those countries than the audience estimate suggests.

Language rule: selecting English as the ad set language reaches only members whose profile language is English. Run separate ad sets per language if you need local-language audiences.

When should B2B teams use conversation ads?

Conversation ads are a mid-to-bottom funnel tool. The inbox is a personal space, and a cold pitch there reads like spam with a “Sponsored” label.

Use them when:

The audience already knows you: website visitors, viewers of your video ads, readers of your document ads, event registrants, target accounts that have engaged.
You have more than one reasonable next step and do not know which each person wants (read, watch, talk, attend).
You are promoting something with a date: a webinar, a roundtable, an event at a conference.
You have a credible sender, someone the target audience would plausibly hear from.

Skip them when:

The audience is cold and the offer is “book a demo.”
You have only one CTA. A message ad or a Sponsored Content ad with a Lead Gen Form is simpler.
Most of your audience is in the EEA or Switzerland, where only opted-in members can be reached.
You cannot staff the follow-up. Leads from inbox ads go cold fast.

LinkedIn conversation ad examples

The two flows below are illustrative examples written for this guide, not real customer campaigns. Use them as structural templates. They follow LinkedIn’s own best-practice guidance: two to three message layers and at least two CTAs.

Example 1: post-webinar follow-up (lead generation objective)

Audience: members who viewed at least 50% of a webinar promo video, plus matched contacts from the registration list who did not attend.

Sender: the webinar host, a director-level practitioner.

Subject: Missed the live session, %FIRSTNAME%?

Intro message:

Hi %FIRSTNAME%, last week I ran a session on cutting search cluster costs without losing query speed. A few people asked for the parts that matter most to %COMPANYNAME%‘s kind of setup, so I’ve split them out. What’s useful?

Buttons:

Send the 12-min recording → response message
Just the cost checklist → Lead Gen Form (PDF delivered after submit)
Talk through our setup → response message
Not Interested (required)

Response to “Send the 12-min recording”:

Here it is. The sizing section starts at minute 4. If it raises questions about your cluster, the checklist below covers the same ground in 2 pages.

Buttons: Watch the recording (URL) | Get the checklist (Lead Gen Form)

Response to “Talk through our setup”:

Happy to. It’s a 20-minute call with one of our engineers, no slides. Pick a time that works, or leave your details and we’ll reach out.

Buttons: Pick a time (URL to scheduler) | Have someone contact me (Lead Gen Form)

Why it works: three intents (passive, light, hot) in one ad, and every path ends in either a URL or a form, so nothing dead-ends.

Example 2: target-account offer (website conversions objective)

Audience: a matched company list of 300 target accounts, filtered to VP and director seniority in engineering and data functions, who engaged with a document ad in the last 90 days.

Sender: a solutions architect with a real, complete profile.

Subject: Your migration questions

Intro message:

Hi %FIRSTNAME%, you grabbed our migration checklist a few weeks ago. Most teams who do that are in one of three places. Which sounds like you?

Buttons:

Still deciding if we should migrate → response message
Planning it now → response message
Already mid-migration → URL (troubleshooting guide)
Not Interested (required)

Response to “Still deciding”:

Fair. The cost comparison is usually the deciding factor. Here’s a 3-page calculator method we use with customers, plus a 2-minute video explaining it.

Buttons: Open the calculator (URL) | Watch the 2-min video (URL)

Response to “Planning it now”:

Then the cutover plan is where projects slip. We offer a free 45-minute migration plan review. You bring your timeline, we bring a list of what usually goes wrong.

Buttons: Book the review (URL, tracked as a conversion) | Send me the cutover template first (URL)

Why it works: the intro segments the audience by stage, and only the “planning” branch gets the sales ask. The others get value, which keeps the brand welcome in the inbox.

How to set up a LinkedIn conversation ad

Check access. You need creative manager access or higher on the ad account, and an approved sender.
Create an ad set with one of the supported objectives (brand awareness, engagement, website visits, website conversions or lead generation) and set the ad set language. English is required for Draft with AI.
Target narrowly. Retargeting audiences, matched contact lists and matched company lists are the best fit. Keep EEA/Switzerland opt-in delivery in mind.
Create the ad: “Ads in this ad set” then “Create new ad.” Fill in Basic Info (name, sender, optional banner and footer) and, for lead generation, select or create a Lead Gen Form.
Pick a template that matches your goal, or start from scratch.
Build the intro message in the ad builder: optional subject, message text, optional image, then the first CTA button with its action (URL, form or next message).
Add buttons and responses for each branch with “Add button.” Use View Flowchart to see the whole tree and check every branch ends somewhere useful.
Create, then set the ad to Active. It stays in draft until you do, and it is reviewed before delivery.

Creative rules for conversation ads

Write like a person, not a brochure. The sender’s face is next to every line. If they would not send it from their own account, rewrite it.
Keep the intro short. LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager flags messages above 500 characters, and its Sponsored Messaging tips page says Message Ad body text under 500 characters drives a 46% higher click-through rate on average. The same discipline applies here.
Two to three layers, not ten. LinkedIn recommends two to three messages with at least two CTAs. Deep trees mostly go unread.
Make button labels outcomes, not verbs. “Get the 2-page checklist” beats “Learn more.” You have 25 characters.
Use macros carefully. A fallback of “Hi LinkedIn Member” looks broken. Write the opener so it reads naturally either way, or drop the first-name macro.
Pick a credible sender. LinkedIn’s best practices suggest someone with a director-level or higher title who is relevant to the audience, with a professional, publicly visible profile photo.
Every branch ends in an action. No branch should end with a message that has no buttons.
Add a banner for desktop. It is desktop-only, but it is free real estate next to the conversation.

What metrics should you judge conversation ads by?

LinkedIn’s Sponsored Messaging metrics (Campaign Manager help), plus the standard lead metrics:

Metric	Definition	How to use it
Sends	Times the ad was delivered	Volume; your cost basis
Opens	Times the ad was first opened	Volume of people who looked
Open rate	Opens / sends	Mostly a subject line and sender signal
Sponsored Messaging clicks	CTA button, body link and banner clicks	Real engagement
Button clicks	Clicks per CTA button	Compare branches in the flowchart view
Click to open rate	Clicks / opens	Primary creative metric
Cost per send	Spend / sends	What you pay
Cost per open	Spend / opens	Useful for comparing senders and subjects
Leads, cost per lead	Lead Gen Form submissions and spend per lead	Primary outcome for lead gen ads

Note that LinkedIn stopped reporting Average CPC for Sponsored Messaging from July 2024, and since then sends and opens no longer count toward impressions and clicks.

How to read them:

Optimize to cost per lead or cost per booked meeting, then to click-to-open rate. Open rate mostly tells you whether the subject and sender earned a look.
Use button clicks by branch to learn intent. If most people pick the passive option, your audience is earlier in the funnel than you thought; shift budget to content formats.
Watch Not Interested behavior and declining open rate over time: both suggest the audience is saturated. Because LinkedIn strictly controls how often a member receives Sponsored Messaging, small audiences exhaust quickly.
Allow for lag. Members only receive the ad when they are active on LinkedIn and may open it later, so do not judge a conversation ad on its first 48 hours.

For broader context on what LinkedIn leads cost across formats, see LinkedIn Ads cost.

Conversation ads vs message ads in one line

Conversation ads give the reader up to five choices per message and a branching thread; message ads give one message with one CTA button. Both are Sponsored Messaging, both are billed per send, and both follow the same EEA and Switzerland opt-in rule. Most B2B teams should default to conversation ads and use message ads only for a single, simple ask.

Reviewing conversation ads with GTM Hacker

GTM Hacker’s paid ads reviews cover LinkedIn Ads with a weekly scored report and ranked changes, using agents such as LinkedIn Ads Basic Review and LinkedIn Ads Campaign Reporter. Spend-affecting changes always wait for a person to approve them; low-risk fixes can be set to auto-approve per campaign, or not.