LinkedIn Ads - Lightdash

The LinkedIn Ads live data source reads one Campaign Manager ad account. Each query is one report request, and Lightdash shows the results as they come back from LinkedIn. It covers paid ads only, not organic Company Page analytics. It’s a level 3 integration: its API returns reports.

Before you start

Live data sources enabled for your organization. See Live data sources.
Admin role in the Lightdash project.
A LinkedIn member with a role on the ad account.
Your ad account ID: the number at the top of the account in Campaign Manager.

If LinkedIn Ads shows a Request button instead of connecting, your instance doesn’t have a LinkedIn client. On a self-hosted instance, configure one.

Connect LinkedIn Ads

On the nav bar, click Browse → Semantic Layer.
In the sidebar, select Live data sources, then click Add.
Select LinkedIn Ads.
Enter a Name, such as LinkedIn Ads, and the Ad account ID.
Click Continue to LinkedIn.
Sign in with your LinkedIn account and allow access. Lightdash asks for read-only access to your ad accounts and their reporting.

Lightdash checks that the member can read the ad account and adds a Performance table to Explore. To change the member, choose Sign in again from the source’s menu.

Dimensions

Dimension	Notes
Date, Date month, Date year	In UTC
Campaign group ID, Campaign group name
Campaign ID, Campaign name
Campaign status, Campaign type, Campaign objective	Current values, not values at the time of the activity

Names show their current value too. Creatives, demographics and conversion actions aren’t available.

Metrics

Metric	Notes
Cost, Conversion value	In the ad account’s currency
Impressions
Reach	Deduplicated by LinkedIn for each row, so don’t add rows together
Clicks, Landing page clicks, Total engagements	Clicks counts LinkedIn’s chargeable clicks
Likes, Comments, Shares	Sponsored Content only
Follows	Sponsored Content and Follower ads only
Video views, Video completions
Leads, Lead form opens	From LinkedIn lead gen forms
Conversions, Post-click conversions, Post-view conversions	Website conversions

Combination rules

A query can use at most 18 metrics and one of Date, Date month or Date year.
To filter by Campaign ID, include a campaign dimension in the query.
To filter by Campaign group ID, include a campaign group or campaign dimension in the query.
Reach covers at most 92 days. Shorten the date range or remove it.
LinkedIn rounds totals older than six months to whole months. Without a date dimension, a range that reaches back that far has to start on the first of a month and end on the last of a month.

Lightdash checks these rules before calling LinkedIn and tells you what to change.

Supported features

Feature	Available
Filters on Campaign ID and Campaign group ID	Yes, exact match
Filters on other dimensions	No
Filters on metrics	No
OR filters and nested filter groups	No
Table calculations, custom metrics and custom dimensions	No
Period-over-period comparisons, pivots and date zoom	No

Limits

Limit	Value
Default date range	Last 28 days, when the query has no filter on Date
Most rows per query	14,999
Timeout	60 seconds per request
Queries at once	5 per source
Calls per minute	60 per source
Calls per hour	1,000 per source

A query can make several calls, because Lightdash also reads campaign and campaign group names from LinkedIn. When a query has more than 14,999 rows, Lightdash shows an error rather than a partial result. Narrow the date range, add a filter or remove a dimension.

Example questions

“Spend and leads by campaign over the last 28 days.”
“Monthly impressions and clicks this year.”
“Top 10 campaigns by conversions last month.”

Troubleshooting

This LinkedIn member can’t read the ad account. Check the ID in Campaign Manager and that the member has a role on the account, then sign in again. Numbers don’t match Campaign Manager. Dates here are in UTC, so compare a range in UTC first. Totals older than six months are rounded by LinkedIn to whole months.

​Before you start

​Connect LinkedIn Ads

​Dimensions

​Metrics

​Combination rules

​Supported features

​Limits

​Example questions

​Troubleshooting