LinkedIn Ads released a new targeting feature called Audience Expansion. We’ve received a lot of questions on this targeting option, so we thought we’d write a blog post to help you better understand its use-case. In this post, I’m going to explain what Audience Expansion is, when you should use it, and what this means for you, the advertiser.

What is Audience Expansion on LinkedIn Ads?

Audience Expansion is similar to Facebook Lookalike Audiences or Twitter lookalike audiences. By enabling Audience Expansion for your campaign, LinkedIn will automatically identify similar users based on your initial targeting criteria, such as company, groups, and skills.

Audience Expansion is available for both Sponsored Updates and Text Ads. In the LinkedIn Campaign Manager, this targeting option is enabled by default. To turn it off, you can click “More targeting options” and disable it.

When Should I Use Audience Expansion on LinkedIn Ads?

There are some strategic use-cases where Audience Expansion comes in handy for a campaign.

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Small Target Audiences

LinkedIn recommends targeting an audience of at least 300,000 for optimal delivery. If your targeting settings are too limiting, Audience Expansion will help your campaign reach more of the right people without you having to edit any of your existing settings.

Stale Campaigns

Ad fatigue is inevitable (and thankfully, it is why we’re all still employed in this industry). People don’t want to keep seeing the same ads over and over. And, if you’re noticing performance start to taper off, your campaign may be at the end of its lifetime. In this scenario, you can extend the life of the campaign by enabling Audience Expansion before you pause the campaign completely.

Why Should I Care About Audience Expansion?

Audience Expansion is powerful and automated. It allows you to reach your intended audience with less effort. You can use Audience Expansion to discover new prospects that you may not have thought of and seamlessly drive more of them into your marketing funnel.

LinkedIn is making great strides with its advertising solutions, and advertisers are noticing. If you haven’t had a chance to try Audience Expansion on LinkedIn, start testing campaigns today.

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