LinkedIn Audience Expansion and the LinkedIn Audience Network
Two settings in every LinkedIn ad set reach people outside the audience you built. Audience Expansion adds members who look like your targeting, and the LinkedIn Audience Network shows your ads on other apps and sites. This guide explains what each does, when it is on, how to control it and what it changes in your reports.
This guide is built from LinkedIn's Marketing Solutions help pages: use audience expansion in your ad set, audience expansion and professional demographic reporting, auto-generated audiences, the LinkedIn Audience Network page and its FAQs, and LinkedIn's pages on block and allow lists and the Brand Safety & Suitability Hub. Lists, retargeting and predictive audiences are covered in our LinkedIn Matched Audiences guide, and the objectives these settings work within are in our LinkedIn ad objectives guide.
- What Audience Expansion does
- When it is on and how to turn it off
- Audience Expansion in your reports
- What the LinkedIn Audience Network is
- How LinkedIn finds your audience on other sites
- Block lists, allow lists and category exclusions
- Audience Network reporting
- How we set these up
- Frequently asked questions
What Audience Expansion does
Audience Expansion shows your ads "to member accounts with similar attributes to your target audience." LinkedIn's example: an ad set targeting the skill Online Advertising might also reach members who list B2B Marketing. The expanded audience is built from "professional demographics and past engagement data based on the ad set targeting you built," and LinkedIn places it at the top of the funnel, calling it "a good choice for an upper-funnel marketing strategy."
It is one of four AI-built audience types LinkedIn lists in Campaign Manager. They are easy to mix up:
| Type | What it starts from | Funnel stage LinkedIn gives | Where you set it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audience Expansion | The targeting you built, plus professional demographics and past engagement | Top: awareness and consideration | Enable Audience Expansion checkbox in the ad set |
| Auto-Targeting | Your product or company URL, targeting settings and optional signals | Full funnel | Choose Auto-Targeting when building the audience |
| Buyer groups | LinkedIn signals such as professional connections, for up to three product categories | Mid and bottom, account-based marketing | Add Buyer Groups when building the audience |
| Predictive audiences | Your source data (a list, Lead Gen Form, conversion or retargeting audience) | Bottom: consideration and conversion | Audiences page, before the ad set |
With Auto-Targeting, note one rule before you save: "Once you save the ad set with Auto-Targeting applied, you can't switch back to manual targeting." Predictive audiences are explained in our Matched Audiences guide.
When it is on and how to turn it off
LinkedIn says "Audience expansion is automatically enabled on ad sets where it's available." So unless you clear it, an ad set that can use it will. The control is a checkbox, Enable Audience Expansion, in the Audience section of the Set up ad set page, and you can change it when you create or edit the ad set.
It isn't available everywhere. Expansion "isn't available for dynamic ad formats (follower, spotlight, or jobs ads) or auto-generated audiences (Auto-Targeting, buyer groups, or predictive audiences)." The predictive audiences page says the same: "Audience Expansion is turned off for ad sets that use predictive audiences."
Exclusions still hold. "If you exclude specific attributes from your target audience, those attributes from that targeting criteria won't be included in audience expansion." LinkedIn's advice is to add companies, titles or seniorities you don't want as exclusions when you run with expansion on. Targeting facets themselves are covered in our LinkedIn ads basics guide.
Audience Expansion in your reports
- Results are combined. Impressions, clicks and professional demographics "will include activity from both your target audience and expansion audience." There is no separate expansion column.
- Demographics can drift. LinkedIn says you "may see impressions delivered amongst professional demographics that don't always match your targeting selections," for example the same title at a different seniority.
- Audience size leaves it out. The estimated size in the Forecasted Results panel, and the count of a saved audience, "won't include member accounts from audience expansion."
- Audience penetration can pass 100%. Because the count excludes expansion (and the recent or permanent location option), the audience penetration metric "can be more than 100%" when expansion is on.
To judge its effect, LinkedIn suggests watching CPC, CPM, reach, impressions and engagement, and checking the professional demographics report.
What the LinkedIn Audience Network is
The LinkedIn Audience Network extends an ad set "beyond the LinkedIn feed to members on third-party apps and sites, if their settings allow." The placements on approved apps and sites "include native and interstitial placements," and LinkedIn says it uses a vetted list of approved publishers.
- Formats: single image, carousel, document and video ads only. "If you include a LinkedIn Event URL in your ad, your ads will only be displayed in the LinkedIn feed."
- Same settings: the ad set's targeting, bid type and budget apply. There is no extra charge, but "you may find that your ad sets reach their budget faster, as your impressions will likely increase."
- No off-LinkedIn only option: "you can't run a separate ad set to reach your audience off-LinkedIn only." With the network on, any ad in the ad set can show in the feed or on partner sites.
- A CTA is required: the network needs a call-to-action button with a destination URL. If you don't add one, one is added for network placements, which affects the Clicks to Landing Page metric.
- Ads look different: rendering follows each publisher's specs, so LinkedIn recommends "images or videos with minimum overlay text" and short ad titles. The ad preview shows examples once the network is enabled.
The setting is the LinkedIn Audience Network checkbox in the ad set's Placements section. How video runs there (outstream and in-stream) is in our LinkedIn video ads guide.
How LinkedIn finds your audience on other sites
Publishers send a bid request when they have space. For a member signed in to LinkedIn, LinkedIn matches the request against its member data and your targeting. Otherwise, "we use a model to estimate whether the signal likely belongs to a member who fits your targeting criteria," for example when the person isn't logged in. Signals can include cookies, the Android advertising ID, the user agent, IP address, time stamp, page URL or app name, and hashed emails, and this observation data "is retained for a maximum of 90 days."
Two consequences for reporting: LinkedIn's key results page warns that some network results "might come from audiences that sometimes align only partially with your targeting criteria," and network "impressions and clicks ... are not accredited by the MRC." In the EEA and Switzerland LinkedIn says it doesn't collect site or app visit data from third parties to inform the model, other than (subject to consent) sites with its Insight Tag.
Block lists, allow lists and category exclusions
Controls live in the Brand Safety & Suitability Hub (Account settings, then Brand safety) or on the individual ad set:
- IAB category exclusions: block publisher categories. LinkedIn notes the categories come from its partner Pixalate and "could be updated or changed during your ad set run," so review them while it runs.
- Block or allow lists: a CSV or TXT file uploaded with LinkedIn's template, up to 100,000 domains. Download the publisher list (web and mobile app list) first, so your list matches the network.
- DoubleVerify profiles: imported from DoubleVerify's Pinnacle system, available by request through a sales representative.
The rules that catch people out:
- An ad set can have a block list or an allow list, not both.
- Lists work at the root domain: putting xyz.com/news on a list blocks or allows all of xyz.com. LinkedIn's page is inconsistent on subdomains: it says a subdomain covers "the entire root domain," but its own example says sports.xyz.com blocks or allows sports.xyz.com. Treat a subdomain entry as possibly covering the whole domain.
- Account-level lists are applied first, and the ad set level "can only make your brand safety and suitability settings more restrictive." You can't remove an account-level list while creating an ad set.
- An account-level list also applies to CTV Ads ad sets. An allow list built for CTV publishers would limit network ad sets to those publishers, "effectively stopping ad delivery on the LinkedIn Audience Network."
- Only account managers and billing admins can change lists in the hub; campaign managers can add them at ad set level only. Roles are explained in our Campaign Manager roles guide.
LinkedIn adds that it "endeavors to honor your block list and allow list" but "placement outside your intended targeting can occur." Separately, you can block your ads from the right rail of specific LinkedIn profiles and Pages (block lists only, up to 10,000 entries, desktop only). The same ideas on Meta and Google are in our guides to Meta block lists and Google Ads placement exclusions.
Audience Network reporting
- On/Off Network breakdown: in the Campaigns, Ad sets or Ads tab, choose Breakdown, then On/Off Network, to split clicks, impressions, views and video completions between the network and LinkedIn. Export "Audience network ad performance" for a CSV.
- Placement breakdown for video: the Placement breakdown separates the feed, standalone ads in publisher content and in-stream ads. For in-stream video LinkedIn recommends CPV and completion rate as the measures.
- Conversions: conversions from network placements "will be reported at the ad set-level only." An impression counts when the ad renders, and Uncategorized means the placement is unknown.
- Publisher delivery reports: in the hub, these reports list each publisher, its URL, first and last date served and IAB categories. The lookback is six months, and network impressions in these reports are available from June 2025.
How we set these up
This is our own practice, not LinkedIn's guidance:
- For narrow B2B targeting (named accounts, specific titles), we clear Audience Expansion so the demographics report shows who we actually chose. For broad awareness ad sets we often leave it on and add exclusions.
- We test the Audience Network in a separate ad set with the same ads and compare cost per lead or conversion, not CPM, because network clicks and impressions are counted differently.
- Before launching with the network on, we download the publisher list, apply a block list for categories the client doesn't want, and pull a publisher delivery report after the first weeks.
- We tag destination URLs so network traffic can be checked in analytics; see our UTM tracking links guide.
Frequently asked questions
Is LinkedIn Audience Expansion on by default?
Yes. LinkedIn says it is automatically enabled on ad sets where it is available. Clear the Enable Audience Expansion checkbox in the ad set's Audience section to turn it off.
Can I see how many results came from Audience Expansion?
Not separately. Impressions, clicks and professional demographics include both your target audience and the expansion audience.
Which LinkedIn ad formats can run on the Audience Network?
Single image, carousel, document and video ads. Ads that include a LinkedIn Event URL show only in the LinkedIn feed.
Can I run LinkedIn ads only on the Audience Network?
No. LinkedIn says you can't run a separate ad set that reaches your audience off LinkedIn only; with the network on, ads can show in the feed and on partner sites.
Can I use a block list and an allow list on the same ad set?
No. Each ad set can have either a block list or an allow list. An account-level list applies first, and ad set settings can only be more restrictive.
For more on LinkedIn advertising, see our guides to LinkedIn ads basics, LinkedIn ad objectives, LinkedIn Matched Audiences and LinkedIn ads bidding.