The Target Account Ads Playbook
Works with
Implementation kit
- The account rules, with the domain trap
- The two-pass list-check prompt, with the output schema
- The campaign settings worksheet and check prompt
- The launch sequence and the audience size check
- The gate card and the weekly readout prompt
- Ten sample companies with the answer key
LinkedIn ads that warm the accounts you are about to contact. An AI agent checks the list, checks the campaign before launch, and writes the weekly readout. A person makes every call that spends money.
The full method is below. Three agent jobs, two human gates, and one principle.
A wrong audience spends at the normal rate and reports like a normal campaign. The only cheap place to catch it is before the upload.
The design principle the whole system enforces
How it works
01Write the account rules before the list
The trigger is a named list of companies you intend to contact. Before anyone builds it, write the class test a stranger could apply to one company. Country, ownership, headcount band, the automatic exclusions, and the suppression lists for customers, open deals, and opt-outs.
The agent in the next step can only be as precise as these rules. A vague rule here becomes a wrong audience later.
02An agent checks every company
Two passes. A fast screen cuts the obvious rows from the name and domain alone. A research pass then checks each remaining company on the web, one at a time, and returns KEEP, CUT, or UNSURE with a source and a reason on every row. A missing source is UNSURE, never KEEP.
Watch for the domain trap. LinkedIn matches company lists on the website domain, so a subsidiary listed under its parent's domain pulls in the parent's whole workforce. The matched count looks healthy while the ads reach the wrong people.
03A person reads the cuts, then uploads
Every CUT reason and every UNSURE row gets a human read, plus a spot-check of a few KEEPs. If a check was wrong, fix the rule that produced it and rerun. The upload is a person's decision.
Watch for the urge to add companies back when the list comes back small. The fix for a small audience is a looser targeting setting, never a company the check cut.
04Check the audience size before you design the campaign
LinkedIn will not serve a matched audience under 300 members, and a company list takes about two days to match. Read the matched count, then build only the layers you can fill today. Below the minimum, loosen seniority first, then the job function filter, then combine the list with your retargeting audience.
Watch for the layer that never activates. It sits in the campaign doing nothing, and nobody notices for weeks.
05An agent checks the campaign before launch
The builder reads what they meant to set. The agent gets the settings worksheet and the campaign as configured, from the API, an export, or screenshots of the review screen, and lists every difference. Anything it cannot see is reported as CANNOT SEE, never an assumed default.
Two defaults matter most. The LinkedIn Audience Network serves your ads in other apps and sites, and audience expansion adds people outside your list. On an account campaign, both go off. The objective is locked once the campaign is created, so it gets checked before, not after.
Watch for a cost per thousand impressions far below normal in the first days. Cheap impressions usually mean the ads left LinkedIn's feed.
06Ads first, outreach second
The account enters the audience and the ads run for about a week before the first message goes out. Ads introduce, outreach asks, and the person reading your first message has already seen your name.
Suppression runs both ways. A reply, a booked meeting, or a new deal takes the account out of the ads and the sequence together.
07An agent writes the readout, a person decides
The gates are written before launch. Each has the number, the day it is read, and the action under each outcome. Each week the agent fills in the readout from the exports and names the accounts that engaged. A person decides to continue, change, or stop, and writes one line of reason.
A failed gate points at a layer. Most campaigns that miss, miss on the list or the settings, which a new ad does not fix. The reason line sends the next campaign back to the layer the gate named.
Check the list before you pay to show it anything.
The implementation kit above packages the rules, the three agent prompts, the worksheets, and the answer key.
