LinkedIn Ads Targeting by Seniority
Reach decision-makers, influencers, or end users — based on where they sit in the org chart.
What is Seniorities targeting on LinkedIn?
Seniority targeting on LinkedIn lets you filter audiences by their inferred level within their organization's hierarchy. Unlike job title targeting, which requires you to manually list every relevant title, seniority targeting automatically groups people into levels like Entry, Senior, Manager, Director, VP, CXO, and Owner. This makes it a powerful broadening tool — but it comes with a critical caveat that trips up most advertisers: LinkedIn infers seniority algorithmically, and the results are not always what you expect.
How seniorities targeting works
Members do not select their seniority level on LinkedIn. Instead, LinkedIn's algorithm infers it based on signals from the member's profile: job title keywords, years of experience, position in the company's org chart (if available), and the titles of people they manage or report to. This means seniority is an educated guess, not a declared fact. The algorithm is reasonably accurate for clear titles like "VP of Sales" (mapped to VP) or "CEO" (mapped to CXO), but struggles with ambiguous titles where the same words mean different things at different companies.
LinkedIn offers these seniority levels for targeting: Unpaid, Training, Entry, Senior, Manager, Director, VP, CXO, Partner, and Owner. Each level represents a tier in the organizational hierarchy, but the boundaries between them are fuzzy. The most important thing to understand is that these levels are not mutually exclusive with job titles — a "Senior Marketing Manager" might be classified as "Senior" or "Manager" depending on how the algorithm weighs the competing signals in the title.
LinkedIn's seniority targeting is based on the member's current position, not their career history. If someone was a VP at their previous company but is now a Director at a new company, they will be classified as Director-level for targeting purposes. This is generally desirable for advertisers — you want to reach people based on their current authority, not their past roles. However, members who have not updated their profile after a job change will show their previous seniority until they update.
Effective targeting combinations
This is the most scalable way to reach your buying committee on LinkedIn. Instead of listing dozens of specific job titles, select a job function (e.g., "Marketing") and layer on seniority levels (e.g., Director and VP). This captures every Director and VP-level person in the Marketing function — including titles you might not have thought to target individually. It is broader than job title targeting but still focused on the right people. Use this approach when you want to maximize reach within a specific function without manually building an exhaustive title list.
The combination of seniority and company size tells you not just how senior someone is, but how much authority that seniority actually represents. A Director at a 50-person company has more authority relative to the organization than a Director at a 5,000-person company. Conversely, a VP at a 5,000-person company controls significantly more budget than a VP at a 50-person company. Use this combination to build campaigns that match the authority level to your product's price point and sales cycle.
When you need to reach senior people with specific expertise, combine seniority with skills targeting. For example, targeting VP seniority plus the skill "Salesforce Administration" reaches senior leaders who have hands-on experience with Salesforce — a much stronger signal than just targeting VPs broadly. This combination is particularly effective for technical products where the buyer needs domain expertise to understand the value proposition. The skills layer ensures the senior person you reach actually understands the problem you solve.
- Target Director and VP for Most B2B SaaS Campaigns: For B2B SaaS products with an ACV above $10K, Director and VP seniority levels are the sweet spot. These people have budget authority and decision-making power without being so senior that they are unreachable (CXOs at large companies rarely engage with ads directly). Director-level targets are usually the internal champion who evaluates tools and builds the business case, while VP-level targets are the budget holder who signs off. Running campaigns at both levels with different messaging — educational content for Directors, ROI-focused content for VPs — covers the buying committee effectively.
- Be Cautious with the 'Senior' Seniority Level: The "Senior" level in LinkedIn's taxonomy is one of the most misunderstood options. It does not mean "senior leader" — it means individual contributors with the word "Senior" in their title. A "Senior Software Engineer" is classified as "Senior," not because they are a leader, but because their title literally contains the word. If you are trying to reach experienced leaders, skip the "Senior" level entirely and go straight to Manager, Director, or VP. Including "Senior" in your targeting will flood your audience with individual contributors who have no purchasing authority.
- Use Owner and Partner for Small Business Targeting: The "Owner" and "Partner" seniority levels are valuable for reaching small business decision-makers and professional services leaders respectively. "Owner" captures founders, co-founders, and business owners at small companies — these are people with direct purchasing authority and no procurement process. "Partner" captures senior leaders at law firms, accounting firms, consulting firms, and venture capital firms. If you sell to professional services firms or SMBs, these seniority levels are more effective than CXO for reaching the actual decision-maker.
- Cross-Reference Seniority with Your CRM Data: Before committing budget to specific seniority levels, analyze your CRM to see which seniority levels your best customers actually came from. Export your closed-won deals, look up the buyer's LinkedIn profile, and categorize them by seniority. You might discover that your best customers are consistently Director-level, not VP-level — which means you have been over-investing in VP targeting. Let your conversion data, not your assumptions, determine which seniority levels get the most budget.
Common mistakes to avoid
Assuming 'Senior' Means Senior Leadership
This is the number one mistake with seniority targeting. When B2B marketers see "Senior" in the seniority dropdown, they think it means experienced leaders and decision-makers. In LinkedIn's taxonomy, it means individual contributors with "Senior" in their title — Senior Accountants, Senior Developers, Senior Analysts. These are typically mid-career ICs with zero purchasing authority. If you include "Senior" in your targeting expecting to reach executives, up to half your budget will be wasted on the wrong audience. Always use Director, VP, or CXO to reach actual leaders.
Targeting CXO Without Company Size Filters
Targeting CXO seniority across all company sizes is a recipe for wasted spend. The CEO of a 3-person startup and the CEO of a 3,000-person company are both classified as CXO, but they are radically different buyers. The startup CEO has a $500 monthly software budget and makes decisions in 5 minutes. The enterprise CEO has a million-dollar budget but will never see your ad because their EA manages their email and they scroll past sponsored content. For CXO targeting, always pair with company size brackets that match your ICP and pricing.
Excluding Manager Level from Decision-Maker Campaigns
Many advertisers skip Manager-level targeting because they assume managers do not have budget authority. This is a mistake for two reasons. First, at small and mid-size companies, Managers often do control budget — a "Marketing Manager" at a 200-person company might own a $500K annual budget. Second, Managers are frequently the people who research, evaluate, and recommend tools to their Director or VP. Excluding them means you miss the person who will champion your product internally. Include Managers in your targeting and let your content strategy work for their level — case studies and comparison guides perform well with this audience.
Frequently asked questions
How does LinkedIn determine seniority level?
LinkedIn infers seniority using a machine learning model that analyzes multiple signals from a member's profile. The primary signal is the job title: keywords like "Director," "VP," "Chief," and "Manager" are strong indicators. Secondary signals include years of experience, the size of the company, whether the person has direct reports, and how their title compares to others at the same organization. Members cannot manually set their seniority level — it is entirely algorithmic. The model is generally accurate for titles with clear hierarchy keywords but can misclassify ambiguous titles or titles that vary in meaning across industries and company sizes.
What is the difference between CXO and Owner seniority levels?
CXO captures people with C-suite titles like CEO, CFO, CTO, CMO, and similar Chief-level roles. Owner captures people who list themselves as Owner, Founder, Co-Founder, or Proprietor. There is significant overlap — many startup founders are both the Owner and the CEO. The practical difference is that CXO includes C-suite executives at large companies who did not found the business, while Owner includes small business owners who may not use a C-suite title. If you are targeting startup founders, use both CXO and Owner. If you are targeting hired executives at established companies, use CXO alone.
Can seniority targeting misclassify people?
Yes, and it happens more often than most advertisers realize. The most common misclassifications occur with ambiguous titles. "Senior Analyst" might be classified as "Senior" (correct for the IC level) or occasionally as "Manager" if the algorithm overweighs years of experience. "Associate Director" might be classified as "Director" or "Manager" depending on how LinkedIn's model interprets the "Associate" qualifier. Industry-specific titles are also problematic — "Principal" means a senior partner at a consulting firm but a school administrator in education. Expect 10-20 percent of your seniority-targeted audience to be slightly misclassified, and design your campaigns with that margin of error in mind.