Spinaker vs. LinkedIn Campaign Manager
Spinaker connects to your LinkedIn Ads account through LinkedIn's own Marketing API and adds bulk editing, reusable targeting, staged review, and a full audit trail on top of Campaign Manager. Below is a feature-by-feature look at where each one stands.
Feature-by-feature comparison
Swipe to compare Campaign Manager →
| Capability | Spinaker | Campaign Manager |
|---|---|---|
| Account access & governance | ||
| Multiple people, one ad account |
Every user can access every connected ad account and stage changes together.
Included.
|
Five roles: Account Manager, Campaign Manager, Creative Manager, Viewer, Billing Admin.
Included.
|
| Restrict what a specific person can see or do |
Not yet. Everyone in a subscription has the same access.
Not available.
|
The five roles restrict a person to view only, creative only, or a single ad account.
Included.
|
| Creating campaigns & ads | ||
| Create a new Campaign, Ad Set, or Ad from scratch |
Builds the full Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad tree, staged like any other change.
Included.
|
Native creation flow for every entity.
Included.
|
| Ad formats | ||
| Single image, Video, Carousel image, Text, Spotlight, Follower, Jobs, Job posting |
|
|
| Message, Conversation, Event |
Duplicates existing ads only.
Partial.
|
|
| Document |
Blocked for any third-party tool by LinkedIn's API.
Not available.
|
|
| Targeting & audiences | ||
| Build new Matched Audiences (contact lists, website retargeting, lookalikes) |
Targets existing Matched or Saved Audiences. Building a new one happens in Campaign Manager.
Not available.
|
Native audience-building tools for every Matched Audience type.
Included.
|
| Reusable targeting presets that flag drift automatically |
Define an audience once, apply it anywhere, get flagged when one drifts.
Included.
|
Saved Audiences can be reused, but with no link back to where they're applied and no drift detection.
Partial.
|
| Estimated audience size before you publish |
Live forecast as you build targeting, from the same underlying LinkedIn data.
Included.
|
Native audience forecast.
Included.
|
| Ad content & preview | ||
| Preview exactly how an ad will look before it goes live |
Every ad has a preview, even formats LinkedIn doesn't natively preview.
Included.
|
Native ad preview.
Included.
|
| A library for images and videos, independent of any one ad |
Upload once or import from LinkedIn, then reuse across every campaign.
Included.
|
Past uploads are offered again when creating an ad, but there's no dedicated library.
Partial.
|
| Editing at scale | ||
| Edit many campaigns, ad sets, or ads in one action |
Select any number of entities, change one field, publish once, whether it's 3 or 300.
Included.
|
Checkbox actions cover status changes; budget, bid, and targeting need a CSV export and re-import.
Partial.
|
| Review, staging & collaboration | ||
| Review every change as a diff before it reaches LinkedIn |
Nothing publishes until you confirm it, against a diff of the current LinkedIn state.
Included.
|
Edits take effect immediately; there's no review step.
Not available.
|
| A shared workspace for pending changes, visible to your team in real time |
Everyone with account access sees each other's pending changes before anything publishes.
Included.
|
No shared workspace; every edit is live the moment it's made.
Not available.
|
| A record of who changed what, and when |
Every change is attributed to its author, timestamped, with its before and after value.
Included.
|
No native change history. Recovering who changed what usually means contacting LinkedIn support.
Not available.
|
| Reporting & tracking | ||
| Performance reporting and analytics |
On the roadmap.
Not available.
|
Native dashboards, breakdowns, and exports.
Included.
|
| Conversion tracking setup (Insight Tag, conversion events) |
Not something Spinaker configures.
Not available.
|
Native setup and management.
Included.
|
Every Campaign Manager claim above was checked against LinkedIn's own documentation and interface, not assumed (checked September 21, 2026). Spinaker reads and writes through LinkedIn's official Marketing API, the same platform Campaign Manager is built on, so what it can and can't do is bounded by that API. Campaign Manager changes without notice: if something above is out of date, tell us and we'll fix it.
Common questions
Is Spinaker a replacement for LinkedIn Campaign Manager?
No. Spinaker is a layer on top of Campaign Manager, not a substitute for it. You still need a LinkedIn Ads account, LinkedIn still bills your ad spend directly, and Campaign Manager stays the system of record for reporting, conversion tracking, and a few ad formats and audience tools Spinaker doesn't cover yet. Spinaker takes over the parts of day-to-day campaign operations that don't hold up at scale in Campaign Manager's native UI: bulk edits, reusable targeting, a staged review step, and an audit trail.
What can Spinaker do that Campaign Manager can't?
Spinaker's core difference is bulk, staged editing: select any number of campaigns, ad sets, or ads and change a field across all of them in one action, then review a diff before anything reaches LinkedIn. Campaign Manager's bulk actions are limited to status changes via checkboxes, or a CSV export-edit-reimport cycle for anything else, and every edit takes effect immediately with no review step or native change history. Spinaker also adds reusable targeting presets that flag drift automatically, and a full audit trail of who changed what and when.
What can Campaign Manager do that Spinaker can't?
Campaign Manager handles performance reporting, conversion tracking setup, and building new Matched Audiences. It also offers five granular per-account user roles and creates every LinkedIn ad format from scratch, including Message, Conversation, Event, and Document Ads. Spinaker doesn't support any of this today.
How does Spinaker work with my LinkedIn account?
Spinaker reads your existing campaigns, ad sets, and ads directly from LinkedIn when you sync your ad account, so there's nothing to migrate and no separate setup for your ad account structure. From there, Spinaker writes changes back to LinkedIn only when you explicitly publish them: nothing changes in your LinkedIn ad account unless a team member stages and publishes a change, and the review step before publish means nothing goes live by accident.
Is there a learning curve coming from Campaign Manager?
Spinaker uses the same campaign, ad set, and ad structure you already work with in Campaign Manager. What's different is the process: you stage changes, review a diff, then publish. An experienced marketer should feel right at home from the get-go.
Does Spinaker handle reporting?
Not yet. Reporting is on our roadmap but not built today. Most agencies and in-house teams we've talked to already run LinkedIn reporting through a dedicated tool (Funnel, Looker Studio, AgencyAnalytics, and similar), so Spinaker focuses on the campaign management work: editing, targeting, staging, and publishing.
Is Spinaker cheaper than Campaign Manager?
They're not really comparable that way. Campaign Manager is free, included with every LinkedIn Ads account, and that doesn't change whether or not you use Spinaker; you pay LinkedIn for ad spend either way. Spinaker is a separate paid subscription for the tooling layer on top, priced apart from ad spend. See pricing for the current rate.
Try Spinaker for yourself
Take it for a spin