The columns to add
| Column | What it measures | Median account |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks to landing page | Clicks that reached your site | 16% of all clicks |
| Landing page CTR (calculate it) | Landing page clicks / impressions | 0.24% |
| Cost per landing page click (calculate it) | Spend / landing page clicks | $17.54 |
| Lead form completion rate | Leads / form opens | 7.6% feed, 40.7% inbox |
| Conversions, post-click | Conversions after a click, not a view | recorded by 61% of accounts |
| Sends, opens, leads (message ads) | Inbox delivery and response | $0.42 per send |
| Reach, frequency | People reached, times each | campaigns under-count |
Save these as a custom column set. The full column-set menu, what each preset shows and how we use it, is in the Campaign Manager tutorial.
The columns that mislead
- Clicks, CTR and average CPC. They count reactions, comments, profile visits and "see more". On thought leader ads, 91% of reported clicks never reach a landing page: a 4.56% total CTR against a 0.46% landing page CTR (Report No. 1).
- Lead form opens. An open is not a lead; at the median account 7.6% of feed form opens become one.
- Post-view conversions. Read them separately from post-click. They count anyone who saw an ad and later converted, whatever brought them back.
- Clicks on message ads. Read opens and leads instead.
Frequency: the number Campaign Manager gets wrong
Frequency in Campaign Manager is per campaign, and campaigns share people. Across 154 ninety-day windows from 71 advertisers, campaigns reported an average frequency of 3.5 while the account actually delivered 9.5 to the same people. Fatigue follows the real number: engagement falls 9% after everyone has seen a creative once and 22% after five times (frequency and fatigue).
Breakdowns and demographics
The Breakdown button splits any row by Audience Network on or off, device, placement, conversion and, for thought leader ads, author. Run the Audience Network breakdown first on any account you inherit: 46% of advertisers in the panel had it on somewhere in the year. The Demographics view shows impressions and clicks by job function, title, seniority, industry, company and company size: sort by clicks with CTR alongside, and a high-click function you do not sell to is a targeting leak. Company-level engagement is the closest LinkedIn comes to "who clicked"; it reports companies, never people (can you see who clicked?).
A weekly and monthly report template
| When | Read | Act if |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | Spend vs budget, cost per landing page click, form completion, cost per lead by offer | Cost per landing page click is above the median ($17.54) two weeks running |
| Weekly | Account-level frequency and engagement rate per creative | Engagement down 20% from launch: refresh |
| Monthly | Post-click conversions, demo requests, companies engaged | Demo requests flat while spend rises |
| Quarterly | Pipeline and revenue from engaged companies, in the CRM | Cost per opportunity above what sales economics allow |
Monthly and quarterly reads need the conversion tracked: 39% of advertisers in the panel recorded no post-click website conversion in a year. How to fix that: LinkedIn ads ROI.
Getting the data out
Export sends any table in Campaign Manager to CSV. For anything recurring, the Reporting API pulls the same data by day into a warehouse or a spreadsheet: LinkedIn ads data to PostgreSQL walks through the schema, and LinkedIn ads with Claude shows how to ask questions of it in plain English. The API reports by day, month or all time, never by hour.