LinkedIn Ads and paying customers
LinkedIn Ads reports leads and conversions it can see, including leads from its own Lead Gen Forms, which are filled in from the person's LinkedIn profile. A paying customer is a company whose payment reached you, often months later. Long sales cycles make LinkedIn the hardest platform to judge by its own numbers.
What does LinkedIn Ads report?
Impressions, clicks, cost, leads from its lead forms, and conversions recorded by its tag inside the windows you set. Its Lead Gen Forms open when the person clicks the ad and are filled in from their LinkedIn profile, so a lead can reach you without the person ever visiting your website.
How can LinkedIn Ads numbers mislead?
- A lead is not a customer. In B2B, most leads never buy, and the ones who do may take months.
- Lead-form leads arrive without a website visit, so matching them to a payment relies on the email address, not a click identifier.
- View-through conversions count people who saw an ad without clicking.
- Counts are often small, so many LinkedIn campaigns stay below 30 paying customers for a long time.
Sources: LinkedIn Help on Lead Gen Forms and the conversion window, including view-through; LinkedIn API docs on the li_fat_id click identifier.
Which LinkedIn Ads export do we need today?
During early access we work from export files you choose to send. From LinkedIn Ads we need one campaign report. From your own systems we need the records that connect a click to a payment.
| File | Columns | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn Ads campaign report | Day, campaign name, campaign ID, cost, clicks, platform-reported conversions | A report exported from LinkedIn Ads as CSV, covering the last 90 days |
| Sign-up or lead records | Date, email or customer ID, UTM tags, and the li_fat_id click identifier if you store it | Your product database, form tool or CRM |
| Payments | Customer email or ID, payment date, amount, refunds | A Stripe payments export, or closed-won deals from HubSpot |
Direct read-only connections are being built. They need LinkedIn Ads's approval before we can offer them, so today everything runs on exports. Step by step: matching payments to ad clicks with exports.
Is Datarithms an official LinkedIn partner?
No. Datarithms has no partnership with LinkedIn and no special access to its data. We read the same reports you can export from your own account, and only the ones you send us.
Related pages
- Google Ads and paying customersSearch and Performance Max conversions vs paying customers, and the export we need.
- How many customers you need before judging a campaignWhy Datarithms gives no verdict below 30 paying customers, with an example.
- For agenciesFor agencies running ads for clients: a dated record of each budget change and what happened next, in paying customers, for the monthly review.
- How it worksThe matching rules behind the weekly table: last ad click within 90 days, refunds within 14 days excluded, no verdict under 30 paying customers.
Want your own table?
Tell us which ad platforms you use and roughly what you spend. We reply by email within two working days.
Early access: we prepare your weekly table with you from your own exports while the direct connections are built.