LinkedIn Campaign Manager performance export
A campaign/creative performance CSV exported from Campaign Manager (Export > campaign performance). Assumed to be a plain metrics grid, it opens with a metadata block, reports in UTC, and splits engagement into "direct" and "viral" columns that partly restate each other.
The shape, how the file is really laid out
The file leads with several metadata rows before the column header, report
title, account name, the date range and generation timestamp (LinkedIn
reporting is denominated in UTC), and the account currency, so the header
is not row 1. Money ("Total Spent") is single-currency per account. Columns
vary by objective and by whether the pull is daily (one row per campaign per
day) or aggregated. Engagement appears as both base and "Viral" variants
("Impressions" plus "Viral impressions," "Clicks" plus "Viral clicks") from
member re-shares. Conversions split into post-click and view-through under a
configurable window (commonly 30-day click / 7-day view).
The traps
The UTC-stamped metadata block is misread as data if the header offset is ignored, and the UTC date range quietly shifts day boundaries away from the business's local calendar.
- Every trap in this export, worked through
- The reconciliation anchor, the total the file asserts about itself
- The refusal cases, when to stop and ask instead of guess
Reference: LinkedIn Campaign Manager Help, export campaign performance & report metadata (UTC) · LinkedIn Marketing API, Ad Analytics (viral vs direct metrics, conversion windows)