LinkedIn Audience Network: How It Works and How to Run It

. By Ads Daddy.

Marketer adjusts mobile ad placement settings

The LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN) is a tick box that decides whether your LinkedIn ads stay on LinkedIn or also run on outside sites and apps. Tick it blindly and you hand your budget to the algorithm. Run it with a plan and it becomes a reach tool you control.

Think of it like online dating. LinkedIn is the swanky bar where everyone's in a blazer. The Audience Network is the same people at the footy, the servo and the gym. Same person. Different mood. Different chance of a reply.

This guide shows you what LAN is, where it shows your ads, how to switch it on or off, and how to judge it by ROI instead of vibes.

TL;DR

  • LAN extends Sponsored Content beyond the LinkedIn feed to third-party sites and apps, still targeted with LinkedIn's professional data.
  • It's an option on the campaign, not a separate campaign. Delivery is optimised across feed and network together, so you need to check where the spend lands.
  • Only some setups qualify. Think Sponsored Content with the right bidding, and image, carousel or video formats.
  • Control it with a blocklist, tight reporting and a clean test. Break results out by serving location and judge on leads and cost per lead, not clicks.
  • Not sure how to set it up? We run LinkedIn campaigns for Australian businesses so you don't have to babysit the settings.

Table of Contents

What the LinkedIn Audience Network actually is

LAN launched in September 2017. The idea: let advertisers use LinkedIn's demographic data to place Sponsored Content on mobile sites and apps outside LinkedIn. It started with tens of thousands of sites and apps and worked with several ad exchanges.

LinkedIn doesn't sell that outside space itself. It plugs into partner exchanges. Publishers send out bid requests, LinkedIn matches them to your targeting, and if you win the auction your ad is served to a person who is a logged-in LinkedIn member.

That last bit matters. You aren't buying random traffic from anywhere. You're buying a chance to reach members of your target audience while they're doing something else.

Plain English version:

  1. You build a Sponsored Content campaign and target by job title, industry, company size and so on.
  2. You allow off-LinkedIn delivery.
  3. LinkedIn bids on your behalf in the outside auctions when your audience shows up.
  4. The ad appears in a partner site or app, often looking native to it.

That native look is worth knowing about. Ads served this way don't carry LinkedIn branding in the placement. A person may only realise it's LinkedIn when they land on the page you've linked to. So don't expect brand recognition from the placement itself. Expect a click, or nothing.

How LAN fits with the rest of your campaign

LAN isn't separate traffic with its own budget line. LinkedIn's delivery system treats the feed and the network as one pool and shifts impressions towards wherever it expects your chosen goal (clicks, leads, conversions or impressions) to come cheapest.

That's the upside and the catch in one sentence.

The upside: more places to find your audience, which can mean more reach for the same targeting.

The catch: the system optimises for the goal you set, not for the quality you imagine. If you optimise for clicks, it hunts cheap clicks. If those cheap clicks live on a puzzle app, that's where your money walks.

The lesson is the same in every channel. Pick the objective that matches the outcome you pay for. If you want leads, don't optimise for traffic and hope.

Does it cost extra?

No. Turning LAN on doesn't add a fee. You pay for the same clicks or impressions whichever placement delivers them. The real cost is where those clicks come from and what they do afterwards.

Which campaigns and formats can use it

Not everything qualifies. Here's the short list.

  • Campaign type: Sponsored Content campaigns. Per LinkedIn's marketing API documentation, only sponsored updates campaigns with CPC bidding can serve beyond the feed. CPM bidding isn't supported for off-LinkedIn delivery.
  • Formats: single-image, carousel and video Sponsored Content are the eligible formats.
  • Not eligible: text ads and message ads generally sit out, because they rely on LinkedIn's own sidebar and inbox placements.
  • Description field: for single-image ads, a description is needed when you use the network, so fill it in properly instead of leaving it blank.

If you're still choosing formats, our guide to how LinkedIn ads appear across formats walks through each one. And if carousels are on your shortlist, see these LinkedIn carousel ad examples.

Creative that survives outside the feed

Outside LinkedIn, your ad is a guest in someone else's house. Nobody opened that app to see your offer. So:

  • Lead with the point. One clear promise in the first line or the first frame.
  • Keep the image uncluttered. Small mobile slots punish busy graphics.
  • Make the next step obvious. One call to action. Not four.
  • Match the page to the ad. The click lands on LinkedIn or your site, so the message has to carry straight through.

That's not LAN-specific advice. It's just that LAN exposes weak creative faster than the feed does.

How to switch it on or off

In Campaign Manager, off-LinkedIn delivery is a campaign-level choice made when you set up delivery. In the API it's the offsite delivery setting, which defaults to off when a campaign is created. So if you've never touched it, check what your account is doing today, because your team or a previous agency may have changed it.

A simple routine:

  1. Open the campaign and look at the delivery settings.
  2. Check whether the Audience Network option is ticked.
  3. Decide on purpose: on with a blocklist, on as a test, or off for this campaign.
  4. Write the decision down with the date, so you can read results against it later.

When the setting is off, the exclusion list can't be edited. So if you want a blocklist, you need LAN enabled first, then you manage which publishers are blocked.

Control it: the blocklist and the budget

The loudest horror story in this corner of the industry comes from a B2B ads specialist, AJ Wilcox, who found a client's budget being eaten by a puzzle game app. Reportedly around 60% of the spend went there. His fix: switch the network off, or if you use it, upload a blocklist so ads only run on sites that make sense for your business.

That's useful advice, and you can use it without drama. Here's the playbook.

Build a blocklist you actually maintain

  • Start with the placement and publisher reports once the campaign has real spend.
  • Block anything that doesn't fit a working professional's day: games, wallpapers, flashlight apps and similar.
  • Keep a running list across campaigns. Reuse it every time you launch.
  • Review it monthly. New publishers appear.

Cap the risk with budget structure

  • Split campaigns. Run a feed-only campaign and a feed-plus-network campaign with the same audience and creative. Now you can compare like for like.
  • Give the test a small slice. A modest share of budget for a few weeks beats a full-budget gamble.
  • Set pacing you can live with. A daily budget cap stops one bad placement from draining a week's spend overnight.

If you're still working out what to spend, our piece on what you need to spend on LinkedIn ads gives you a starting framework.

Measure it by serving location, not by gut feel

Here's where most advertisers go wrong. They look at campaign-level results and shrug.

LinkedIn's reporting can split performance by serving location, on LinkedIn or off. In the API that's a serving location pivot. That is the single most useful cut for LAN. Pull it and compare.

What to compare, in order of importance:

  1. Cost per lead. The number you actually pay for.
  2. Lead quality. Do the network leads book calls, reply to emails, turn into pipeline? Ask sales, not the dashboard.
  3. Conversion rate on the landing page. Cheap clicks with a weak conversion rate are expensive leads.
  4. Click-through rate and CPC. Fine to track, dangerous to worship.

The trap is vanity clicks. A low CPC feels like winning until you notice none of those clicks fill in a form. Always tie the click back to a lead.

For a fuller list of what to track, read the LinkedIn ads metrics that actually move the needle.

A worked example (made-up numbers, real logic)

Say you spend A$2,000 in a month on a campaign for a B2B software demo.

Placement Spend Leads Cost per lead Leads that became sales conversations
LinkedIn feed A$1,500 10 A$150 4
Audience Network A$500 5 A$100 1

The network looks cheaper per lead at A$100 against A$150. But cost per sales conversation is A$375 on the feed (A$1,500 divided by 4) and A$500 on the network (A$500 divided by 1). The feed wins on what matters.

These figures are an illustration, not a benchmark. The point is the method: follow the lead all the way down the funnel before you declare a winner.

The flip side can happen too. If the network leads convert as well as the feed's and cost less, you've found cheap, extra reach. That's why you test.

A worked example (made-up numbers, real logic)

When LAN tends to suit your campaign

LAN isn't a yes or no for every business. It's a fit question.

It tends to make sense when:

  • Your audience is large enough that the feed alone gets expensive or saturates.
  • Your goal is reach or awareness, and you want more touchpoints with the same people.
  • You have a stable, proven creative and a tight blocklist.
  • You can measure what happens after the click.

Run it more carefully when:

  • Your audience is tiny, like a hand-picked list of target accounts. A small pool plus a broad network can spread you thin, so keep a close eye on the report.
  • Your budget is small. Fewer dollars means fewer data points and slower learning.
  • Your offer needs a lot of context. A cold, native-looking placement may not give people enough to go on.
  • Your tracking is patchy. If you can't see leads by placement, you can't judge it.

In other words, LAN is a lever. It works best in the hands of someone who checks it weekly.

Best practices checklist

  • Pick CPC bidding where the network is in play, as it's what the network supports.
  • Use single-image, carousel or video ads that read well on a small screen.
  • Write the description on single-image ads.
  • Upload and maintain a publisher blocklist.
  • Split-test feed-only against feed plus network.
  • Report by serving location every time.
  • Judge by leads and pipeline, not clicks.
  • Record your settings so changes don't surprise you.

If you want to see how this fits into a repeatable system, our LinkedIn advertising workflow for Aussie businesses covers the full process. New to the channel? Start with what LinkedIn advertising is.

Perspective

We get asked about the Audience Network in almost every LinkedIn onboarding call. Usually it goes: "Is it good or is it rubbish?"

Wrong question. It's a setting, and settings don't have morals. What matters is who's driving.

Here's how we look at it. LinkedIn gives you precise targeting. LAN gives you more places to use that targeting. Used with a blocklist, a clean test and reporting by serving location, it's a way to stretch good targeting further. Used on autopilot, any placement setting can waste money.

That's why we manage LinkedIn, Meta, Google, YouTube and Microsoft campaigns hands-on, with tracking tied to leads. You shouldn't have to learn the platform menus. You should see leads, what they cost, and what we're changing next.

Our rule is simple: if a placement can't show us leads, it doesn't keep its budget. If it can, it earns more.

Adrian

Want someone else to run this?

If you'd rather spend your week running the business than digging through placement reports, that's what we do. We create, manage and optimise campaigns across LinkedIn, Meta, Google, YouTube and Microsoft, with tracking and lead delivery built in.

For finance and broking businesses, we also offer lead generation programs, with pricing published on our pay-per-lead page. You can see the full range of platforms we manage on the Adsdaddy site, or look at our lead generation service.

Adsdaddy

Ready to turn LinkedIn into a lead machine? Book a call with us and we'll look at your current setup, including where your ads are actually showing.

FAQ

What is the LinkedIn Audience Network?

It's an option that lets your LinkedIn Sponsored Content run on third-party sites and apps as well as in the LinkedIn feed. Your LinkedIn targeting still applies, and the ads are bought through partner ad exchanges. It doesn't cost extra to enable, because you pay for the same clicks or impressions either way.

Which ads can run on the LinkedIn Audience Network?

Single-image, carousel and video Sponsored Content are the eligible formats. Per LinkedIn's API documentation, the campaigns need CPC bidding, and CPM bidding isn't supported off-LinkedIn. Text ads and message ads generally don't qualify because they depend on LinkedIn's own placements.

How do I check whether it's running on my campaigns?

Open the campaign's delivery settings in Campaign Manager and look at the Audience Network option. Then break your results out by serving location, on or off LinkedIn, to see where spend and leads are landing. If you inherited the account, check every campaign, not just the newest one.

What is the 95-5 rule on LinkedIn?

It's a B2B marketing idea that only a small slice of your potential buyers are in the market at any moment, with the rest not ready yet. The takeaway for ads is to build awareness with the many while capturing the few who are ready. That's one reason some advertisers test extra reach options like LAN, as long as they track results.

What is the 4-1-1 rule on LinkedIn?

It's a content-sharing guideline: for every one piece of your own content, share four pieces from others and one promotional piece. It's about organic posting, not paid ads. Paid campaigns follow a different logic, where creative, targeting and placements get tested against leads.

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