LinkedIn document ads: specs, lead gating and setup (2026)

LinkedIn document ads are Sponsored Content that puts a document (an e-book, case study, white paper, infographic or slide deck) directly in the LinkedIn feed and on the LinkedIn Audience Network. Members flip through the pages without leaving LinkedIn, and you can either let them read the whole thing or gate it: they preview a set number of pages, then submit a Lead Gen Form to unlock the rest. For B2B teams with a strong asset, it is the cleanest way to trade content for contact details on LinkedIn without building a landing page.

This guide covers the current specs, when the format earns its place, how to set it up, what to put in the document, and which numbers to judge it on. For the rest of the LinkedIn ad menu, see the complete LinkedIn Ads guide.

What are LinkedIn document ads?

A document ad has four parts: introductory text above the document, the document itself rendered as a swipeable page viewer, a headline, and a download button. LinkedIn’s help center lists the objectives that support it as brand awareness, engagement, website visits, website conversions and lead generation.

Two details trip people up:

• Every download is a PDF. Whatever you upload (DOC, PPT and so on), members download it as a PDF.
• Links inside the document only work after download. In the in-feed viewer, hyperlinks and CTAs are not clickable. Put your call to action in the ad, not on page 12.

LinkedIn document ad specs (October 2026)

These are taken from LinkedIn’s “Document ads advertising specifications” help article and the document ads page of the LinkedIn Ads Guide.

When should B2B teams use document ads?

Use document ads when the asset itself is the persuasion. The format works because the buyer gets a real sample of your thinking before giving anything up.

Good fits:

• Benchmark reports and original research your buyers would otherwise pay an analyst for.
• Checklists, templates and playbooks that solve a narrow, painful job (a migration checklist, an RFP template, a security questionnaire).
• Case studies aimed at accounts already in an ABM program, where the reader is evaluating you.
• Slide-style “explainers” of a technical concept, sized for mobile.

Poor fits:

• Thin e-books stitched together from blog posts. Preview pages expose thin content immediately.
• Product brochures. Nobody fills out a form for a datasheet.
• Anything where the next step must happen on your site within seconds (a free trial, a pricing calculator). Use a single image or video ad with a website conversions objective instead.

A useful decision rule: if you would not be comfortable showing the first three pages to a skeptical buyer in a sales call, do not gate it on LinkedIn either.

Gated or ungated: how lead gating works

Lead gating is the main reason most B2B teams pick this format. Under the lead generation objective, LinkedIn shows a slider that sets how many pages members can preview. After the preview, the default CTA is “Unlock full document,” which opens your Lead Gen Form (prefilled from the member’s profile). Only after submitting can they read or download the whole file.

Constraints from LinkedIn’s help center:

• Lead-gated document ads accept PDFs only.
• A Lead Gen Form must be attached to every ad in a lead generation ad set.
• Single-page documents cannot use Lead Gen Forms, because at least one page must remain previewable.
• The preview slider also appears for website visits and website conversions objectives, where the CTA sends people to your URL instead of a form.
• Documents uploaded before November 2023 that used a preview-page selection may be unavailable; re-upload them.

Choosing the gate:

How many pages to preview is not something LinkedIn prescribes. In practice, preview enough to prove the document is worth a form, usually the executive summary plus one substantive page, and gate the part with the actual answers. Test two preview depths as separate ads rather than guessing.

Keep the form short. LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Form specs allow up to 12 fields in total (custom questions count toward that limit), but every extra field costs completions. Name, email, company and title are usually enough at this stage.

How to set up a LinkedIn document ad

1. Create or edit an ad set in Campaign Manager (LinkedIn now calls the level that holds targeting and budget an “ad set”) and pick one of the five supported objectives. Choose lead generation if you want to gate.
2. Set targeting and budget as usual. For gated assets, warm audiences (retargeting, matched company lists) usually convert far better than broad job-title targeting.
3. Open “Ads in this ad set” and create a new ad. Add an optional internal ad name and your introductory text.
4. Upload the document via “Upload or select” in the Document section. You can reuse files from the Document Library, which can be filtered by page count.
5. Set preview pages with the slider (lead generation, website visits and website conversions only).
6. Write the headline. It defaults to the file name; replace it with something a person would click.
7. Attach a Lead Gen Form (lead generation) or enter a destination URL and CTA (website objectives).
8. Save the ad and launch. Ads go through review before they show.

Before launch, send a test lead through the ad preview to confirm leads reach your CRM or the Campaign Manager lead download. A gated ad with a broken CRM sync is worse than no ad.

Creative rules for document ads

LinkedIn’s document ads best-practices page and the specs above lead to a short list of rules that matter.

The document:

• Upload a PDF, even for ungated ads. Other formats are converted on download, which LinkedIn says lowers quality.
• Design for a phone screen. Single column, large type, high contrast. LinkedIn explicitly warns against multicolumn text and small fonts.
• Make page 1 work like an ad. It is the thumbnail in the feed. A bold title plus one specific promise (“23 queries that cost us $40k a month”) beats a logo-heavy cover.
• Put the payoff early in the preview. If the preview is all table of contents and foreword, people will not unlock the rest.
• Keep it short. LinkedIn recommends under 10 pages, and the in-feed viewer has no search.
• Avoid dates, prices and URLs that will go stale while the ad is running.
• Flatten the PDF and keep every page the same size, or it may fail upload or render badly.

The ad copy:

• Introductory text: lead with who it is for and what they get, inside 150 characters. “For platform teams running Elasticsearch: the 14-point checklist we use before every upgrade.”
• Headline: the asset name plus format (“Upgrade checklist, 9 pages”). Specificity signals it is worth the form.
• If gated, say so. Surprising people with a form at page 3 burns goodwill and lead quality.

What metrics should you judge document ads by?

Pick metrics that match the objective. CTR on its own tells you little about a document ad: what matters is whether people read far enough to want the rest, and whether the leads are any good.

Metric definitions to know (from LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager help and Marketing API reporting docs):

• Download clicks: clicks on the download button. A click shows intent but does not guarantee a completed download.
• Document completions: the number of times members reached 100% of the document, including those who skipped ahead. Quartile versions (first quartile, midpoint, third quartile) are also reported, and these metrics apply only to document ads.
• Leads and cost per lead: leads collected through Lead Gen Forms attached to the ad set, and spend divided by those leads.

Diagnosing a weak document ad:

• High impressions, low engagement: the cover page and intro text are not doing their job. Test a new page 1.
• Good engagement, low 25% completion: the first pages are filler. Move the strongest content forward.
• Strong preview completion, low form completion: the gate is too early, the form is too long, or the unlock promise is vague.
• Cheap leads that sales rejects: the asset attracts the wrong people. Tighten targeting or make the topic more specific to your buyer’s job.

Give each test at least a couple of weeks and enough spend to get a few dozen leads per variant before calling a winner. LinkedIn audiences are small and costs are high, so small samples swing wildly. If your bigger question is what LinkedIn leads cost in general, see LinkedIn Ads cost.

How document ads fit with other LinkedIn formats

Document ads sit in the middle of a typical B2B LinkedIn funnel:

• Top: video ads and thought leader ads build awareness and create retargeting audiences of viewers.
• Middle: document ads turn that attention into named leads with a valuable asset.
• Bottom: conversation ads or message ads follow up with people who engaged, offering a demo, an assessment or a call.

Running them in that order means each format gets a warmer audience than it would cold.

Reviewing document ads with GTM Hacker

If you want a second pair of eyes on a running account, GTM Hacker’s paid ads reviews cover LinkedIn Ads (alongside Google and Reddit): a weekly scored report with ranked changes, using agents such as LinkedIn Ads Basic Review and LinkedIn Ads Campaign Reporter. Spend-affecting and irreversible changes always wait for a person to approve them; low-risk fixes can be set to auto-approve per campaign, or not.