LinkedIn Ads Targeting Options Explained [in 2022]

Written by: Emily Anderson
Last updated:

If you want to maximize the ROI of your LinkedIn ad campaigns, you have to know the LinkedIn ads targeting options LinkedIn provides.

In this LinkedIn ads tutorial, we are going to show you all the LinkedIn ads targeting options you have access to.

Types of LinkedIn Ad Targeting Options

There are three different types of targeting options on LinkedIn. All three provide a unique audience for your advertisements. These include:

  • Location
  • Audience Attributes
  • Matched Audiences

LinkedIn Location Targeting

Location targeting reaches LinkedIn users depending on their area of residence. In addition, members can also be targeted by ads for locations they searched. LinkedIn locations depend on the details set by a member on their profile. IP addresses can also be used.

Message campaigns only reach users based on their long-term residence. There are also some countries not included in the list for possible locations.

LinkedIn Audience Attributes Targeting

LinkedIn also allows targeted ads based on specific attributes. These include their company, demographics, educational background, job experience, and interests.

LinkedIn Company targeting

Some ads cater to users that belong to some companies. For example, ads can be targeted to users with connections to a large company (500+ employees) that you specify. Some campaigns also reach a company’s followers.

In addition, you can also use a company’s growth rate, revenue, size and industry to target audiences.

LinkedIn Demographics targeting

Demographics are an essential part of any targeted ad campaign. You can reach users based on their age and gender.

LinkedIn Education targeting

LinkedIn ads can also be aimed at users that finish a specific degree or attend a certain university. Fields of study can also be used to zero in on possible ad audiences.

LinkedIn Job targeting

Ads may also be aimed at users that have similar job titles. Those with titles or higher ranks within their workplace can also be potential audiences. The skillset and years of experience can also be used to target specific users for ad campaigns.

Interests and Traits targeting

LinkedIn ads can also use data relating to groups, interests, and traits. These are sourced based on their LinkedIn profile, as well as the groups they have membership in.

Of course, all of these attributes may not be used to exclude people based on harmful prejudices or stereotypes.

Matched Audiences Ad Targeting

Matched or LinkedIn Lookalike audiences are a LinkedIn ad targeting option that allows users to reach custom audiences. These can be tailored based on the following:

  • People who visited a website
  • People who viewed a video
  • Users that opened a form
  • Users that engage with your company’s page
  • Guests in your LinkedIn event

Other data may also be used, such as third-party and lookalikes.

Best Practices for Audience Targeting

LinkedIn recommends a few practices for maximizing ads ran through their platform. For instance, sponsored content and messaging ads usually do well with at least 300,000 users. On the other hand, text ads do well with audiences around 60,000 to 400,000.

As for audience attributes, it helps to match multiple attributes to maximize the number if you want to reach more people. This practice helps because audiences only must match with one attribute to get hit by the ad. If you want to limit your audience size, you can add attributes to the “Narrow” section of your setup. These additional attributes will limit audiences to people having those new specifications.

And when it comes to Matched Audiences, including multiple segments of similar audience types will increase hits. However, including different audience types will decrease your audiences. For example, including visitors of multiple websites will increase hits, but including website visitors and company, members will decrease audiences.

If you want help in building a strong website audience, you can include users that visited your pages in the specifics. You can do this by targeting people that visited a webpage through the app. Also, you can be more creative with your ad campaigns and use videos, forms, or other types of media. You can change the time frame of these to run longer than usual.

Also, LinkedIn helps users run more effective campaigns by warning users if their audiences are too narrow. These notices can help you fine tune your specifics to include more people. That way, your ads reach as many audiences as possible.

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