LinkedIn Audience Expansion vs LAN LinkedIn Audience Network

LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN)

I always turn OFF LinkedIn Audience Network (sites and apps outside of LinkedIn) when I run campaigns. These are the sites and apps outside of LinkedIn that carry the ads I buy on LinkedIn. When we measured the clicks coming from LinkedIn + Audience Network (right side donut chart) you can see the majority of clicks were dark red (bots/fraud). Most folks know this already, so they UNcheck the checkbox next to LinkedIn Audience Network to avoid most of the fraud and save money.

The following is just an example of data from FouAnalytics showing where your ads went AND that these mobile apps clicked through to your landing page. Do you think ANY of these apps are pertinent for your b2b campaigns?

If you choose to use LinkedIn Audience Network, be sure to pull reports about where your ads went. When I reviewed the sites and apps, there wasn't much to be happy about. So it confirmed the decision to leave LAN off.

LinkedIn Audience Expansion

Audience Expansion is different from "Audience Network" (see screen shot below). And "audience expansion" means lookalike audiences on LinkedIn itself. This is much better than the bad sites and apps outside of LinkedIn. Just be aware that your ads may still be shown to fake accounts on LinkedIn. And FouAnalytics cannot measure the ads themselves on LinkedIn. You can still measure on the landing page to see the quality of the clicks arriving on your landing pages. The following is my own experiment using "audience expansion" (not LAN) on LinkedIn.

In this experiment I left "Enable Audience Expansion" turned on. The ads still run on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn's magical algorithms will show my ads to expanded audiences similar to the ones I am targeting. So what happened with the stats? And would I continue using audience expansion?

Audience expansion definitely makes the stats look more attractive, to those focused on CPM prices and CPC (cost per click) metrics. It also drove a lot more engagements/clicks. See the table below, screenshotted from LinkedIn's campaign manager. Observations and comments further below.

The bottom row is the campaign WITH Audience Expansion. Note the following:

• it ate up 2/3 of my daily budget ($66.66) versus $33.91 for the campaign without expansion.
• the campaign with expansion got 10X more engagements (738 vs 80)
• with expansion got 6X more impressions (12,651 vs 1,950)
• click through rate with expansion was slightly higher (5.83% vs 4.1%)
• average CPM with expansion was 1/3 of that without expansion ($5.27 versus $17.39)
• and average cost per click (CPC) was 1/4 ($0.09 vs $0.42)

For those advertisers looking at CPM prices and CPC as key performance indicators, audience expansion surely makes the numbers look good -- far lower average CPMs and CPCs. Far more engagements -- i.e. clicks.

But the question for you is whether your objective is to pad your numbers or to drive real business outcomes for you? I am a small business owner spending my own money and my assessment of this experimental campaign is that audience expansion only makes the vanity metrics look better. I already turned off the audience expansion campaign line. Slow and steady wins the race. Padded numbers don't.

Hope the above experience and example are helpful to you.

More details from my LinkedIn campaigns: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/my-b2b-campaign-proves-awareness-trounces-performance-augustine-fou