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LinkedIn Ads vs TikTok Ads
March 19, 2025 | Author: Sandeep Sharma
7★
Advertise on LinkedIn. Create an ad. Narrow your target audience by job function, geography, and more. Pay per click. Connect with the world's largest audience of active, influential professionals. Launch your campaign in minutes. All you need is a LinkedIn account.
7★
Tell your brand story in a true-to-TikTok way with this sound-on, vertical video ad that can be further enhanced with interactive add-ons.
Advertising, much like intergalactic hitchhiking, requires a good sense of direction, a keen eye for opportunity and a towel (metaphorically speaking). Both LinkedIn Ads and TikTok Ads operate on the same general principle: present a bunch of visually appealing things to an audience and hope they click before their attention span collapses like a poorly constructed hyperspace bypass. They both offer shiny self-serve dashboards, an array of targeting options and analytics that pretend to explain why a particular ad worked when, in fact, it remains a mystery akin to the whereabouts of the last decent cup of tea in the universe.
Now, LinkedIn Ads are what you’d get if an advertising platform put on a suit, straightened its tie and started speaking in bullet points. Launched in 2005 by the fine folks at LinkedIn in the USA, it caters to professionals who enjoy networking, decision-making and the occasional existential dread about their career choices. It costs more per click because, presumably, people in suits are more expensive to engage with and it lets advertisers target based on thrilling attributes like job title, industry and whether or not they appear to know what they’re doing. If you’re selling enterprise software, consulting services or disturbingly expensive leadership courses, this is where you’d do it.
TikTok Ads, on the other hand, are what happen when advertising takes a deep breath, does a backflip and lands somewhere between viral genius and complete chaos. Born in 2019 in China, courtesy of ByteDance, TikTok's ad system is powered by an all-knowing AI that seems to understand people better than they understand themselves. It costs less per click but demands an unholy amount of creativity—because if your ad doesn’t entertain within 0.3 seconds, it gets yeeted into oblivion by an algorithm with no mercy. If you’re in the business of selling sneakers, trendy snacks or questionable life hacks involving toothpaste and kitchen gadgets, this is the place to be.
See also: Top 10 Online advertising platforms
Now, LinkedIn Ads are what you’d get if an advertising platform put on a suit, straightened its tie and started speaking in bullet points. Launched in 2005 by the fine folks at LinkedIn in the USA, it caters to professionals who enjoy networking, decision-making and the occasional existential dread about their career choices. It costs more per click because, presumably, people in suits are more expensive to engage with and it lets advertisers target based on thrilling attributes like job title, industry and whether or not they appear to know what they’re doing. If you’re selling enterprise software, consulting services or disturbingly expensive leadership courses, this is where you’d do it.
TikTok Ads, on the other hand, are what happen when advertising takes a deep breath, does a backflip and lands somewhere between viral genius and complete chaos. Born in 2019 in China, courtesy of ByteDance, TikTok's ad system is powered by an all-knowing AI that seems to understand people better than they understand themselves. It costs less per click but demands an unholy amount of creativity—because if your ad doesn’t entertain within 0.3 seconds, it gets yeeted into oblivion by an algorithm with no mercy. If you’re in the business of selling sneakers, trendy snacks or questionable life hacks involving toothpaste and kitchen gadgets, this is the place to be.
See also: Top 10 Online advertising platforms
