Conversation Ads (Legacy)

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Warning

Deprecation Notice
The Marketing version 202304 (Marketing April 2023) and below has been sunset and the unversioned APIs are going to be sunset soon. We recommend that you migrate to the versioned APIs as well as migrate to the new Content and Community Management APIs to avoid disruptions. See the Migration page for more details. If you haven’t yet migrated and have questions, submit a request on the LinkedIn Developer Support Portal.

A Conversation Ad is a LinkedIn ad format that allows advertisers to deliver pre-determined messages to an inbox of a targeted LinkedIn member. It provides a chat-like experience between both the member and the advertiser. The Conversation Ads API allows advertisers to deliver customizable, branded messages directly to members' LinkedIn messaging inboxes.

Within our API, Conversation Ads are represented by the Sponsored Conversation entity. Sponsored Conversations are composed of Sponsored Message Content.

About the Feature

Conversation Ads are LinkedIn's newest paid messaging format. They provide an interactive experience based on a predetermined set of responses that drive registrations, enrollments, and conversations all within the same interaction environment.

The API enables you to create a decision tree made up of Sponsored Message Contents that represent pre-defined messages and calls to actions:

  • Message Text: This is the message that is displayed to user who is interacting with a conversation ad. Like a real conversation, a conversation ad begins with an opening message that is pre-defined by the advertiser. Clicking Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons can prompt additional messages as pre-defined by the advertiser.
  • Call-to-Action (CTA) Buttons: After creating each message, an advertiser can create between one and four CTA buttons. The advertiser can have each of these buttons perform one of the following tasks:
    • Show the next message. These buttons prompt the next message, pre-defined by the advertiser.
    • Click through to a landing page. These buttons enable a member to go directly to the landing page an advertiser selects.
    • Open a Lead Gen form. This button opens the associated Lead Gen form within the message.

Requirements

Your application must have an access token with the r_ads permission to read Conversation Ads, r_ads_reporting to report on conversation ads, and the rw_ads permission to read, create or modify Conversation Ads.

The authenticated member must have one of the following ad account roles:

  • ACCOUNT_BILLING_ADMIN
  • ACCOUNT_MANAGER
  • CAMPAIGN_MANAGER
  • CREATIVE_MANAGER

Workflows

Setting up a Conversation Ad

The following sequence describes the typical steps required to create a conversation ad:

  1. Before you begin, you need a Sponsored InMail campaign with the following requirements:
    • Specify type = SPONSORED_INMAILS
    • Specify a supported objective type of one of the following: WEBSITE_TRAFFIC/WEBSITE_VISIT, WEBSITE_CONVERSION, BRAND_AWARENESS, ENGAGEMENT and LEAD_GENERATION.
    • Define a budget.
  2. Create a sponsored conversation
  3. Build the conversation tree by creating SponsoredMessageContents. Ensure that all validations are satisfied.
  4. Set the first message node of the Sponsored Conversation by updating the firstMessageContent field.
  5. Use the Urn of the completed Sponsored Conversation to create an AdInMailContent.
  6. Create a DRAFT conversation ad creative.
  7. Test the draft conversation ad
  8. Make any necessary modifications based on testing. Please note that the creative should be in DRAFT status and the editable fields in AdInMailContent and SponsoredConversation should be true.
  9. Activate the creative by updating the creative status to ACTIVE. The creative will be directed to the review queue after activation. Please note that the editable flags for AdInMailContent and SponsoredConversation will NOT change to false automatically.

Reporting on Conversation Ads

You can retrieve analytics for a report that shows metrics of a conversation ad by applying Conversation Ad query parameters to the Ad Analytics Finder. See Ad Analytics Finder Query Parameters.

Conversation Ads support all the pivots used by general ads in the /adAnalyticsV2 endpoint. When used without any new pivots (outside of what Message Ads supports) the returned data for a Conversation Report will look and be exactly what's expected from a Message Ad report.