Utilizing LinkedIn’s Audience Network to Increase B2B Audience Reach

In a rapidly evolving digital world, B2B marketers need to utilize all the tools at their disposal to capture attention and reach the largest segment of their target audience, and that’s where LinkedIn’s Audience Network comes in.

This post will demonstrate how this feature works and which third-party websites and apps it includes. We will also introduce advanced tips and tricks for using it to scale account-based marketing (ABM) efforts while maintaining high targeting precision.

Leveraging LinkedIn Audience Network to Extend Ad Reach

Enabling the Audience Network will allow your LinkedIn Ads to appear on third-party websites and apps, broadening your campaign’s visibility past the native LinkedIn platform. This will enable you to engage with experts even when they are not actively using LinkedIn.

The audience network allows refining targeting parameters, including job title, industry, education level, and company size, ensuring that your ads reach the right target market. As a result, you do not only ensure extended ad reach but also precise targeting.

Understanding Your Target Audience to Extend Ad Reach

Understanding your target audience is crucial for creating effective marketing strategies and ad campaigns. This process includes defining your target audience and their needs, identifying common pain points, and determining how your company can address them. Additionally, creating detailed customer profiles and buyer personas is essential for developing your ideal customer profile for targeted marketing. In the context of business-to-business (B2B) marketing, understanding your target audience is vital for creating effective marketing strategies and ad campaigns.

Define Your Target Audience and Identify Their Needs

Defining your target audience involves identifying the specific group of people or businesses that your product or service is designed for. This includes understanding their demographics, firmographics, psychographics, and buying behavior, as well as their buying process. Conduct market research and gather data on your existing and potential customers to understand your ideal customer better. This data can be collected through surveys, customer feedback, and social media analytics. By understanding who your target audience is and what they need, you can tailor your marketing strategies to better meet their expectations and drive more effective ad campaigns.

Identify Common Pain Points and How Your Company Can Resolve Them

Another aspect of defining your target audience is identifying common pain points and understanding specific challenges and problems that your target audience faces. Once you have identified the pain points, you need to determine how your company can resolve them. This involves developing solutions that address their specific needs and pain points. By addressing these pain points, you can better position your company as a valuable solution provider.

Utilizing the Power of LinkedIn Audience Network to Reach Your Target Audience & Beyond

Using the Audience Network platform, advertisers can increase their ad visibility by up to 25%, reaching millions of professionals across various touchpoints. This feature allows businesses to scale their message and achieve a better return on ad spend and engagement.

How Does This Feature Work for Ad Campaigns?

LinkedIn Audience Network is an advertising feature that spreads sponsored content ads across a network of trusted publishers. As a result, it expands ad reach and ensures accurate targeting using LinkedIn’s comprehensive data.

In addition to expanding ad reach, the LinkedIn Audience Network can streamline your sales process by ensuring that your ads reach the right audience at the right time in their buyer’s journey.

It also guarantees that the ads are strategically positioned to meet the campaign’s goals, whether to increase audience engagement or drive more sales. This feature also allows your sales teams to better understand and engage with potential customers, enhancing overall campaign effectiveness.

There are no worries about blocking ads since they are automatically formatted according to each publisher’s rendering specifications. Meanwhile, marketers can easily preview top examples of ad renderings in real time using the ad preview feature.

How to Enable LinkedIn Audience Network

Enabling the LinkedIn Audience Network for your ad campaigns involves a few simple steps.

Step-by-Step Guide to Enabling the Audience Network for Your Ad Campaigns

1. Sign in to your LinkedIn Campaign Manager account.
2. Click on the “Campaigns” tab and select the campaign for which you want to enable the audience network.
3. Click on the “Ad formats” tab and select the ad format you want to use (e.g., sponsored content, sponsored InMail, etc.).
4. Click on the “Targeting” tab and select the targeting options you want to use (e.g., job title, industry, company size, etc.).
5. Click on the “Audience Network” tab and toggle the switch to enable the audience network.
6. Select the categories of publishers you want to exclude from your ad campaign.
7. Click “Save” to save your changes.

Note: The LinkedIn Audience Network is enabled by default for image, carousel, and video format campaigns. If you don’t want to use those content types for the audience network ad campaign, you can toggle the switch to disable it.

List of Third-Party Websites and Apps included in the LinkedIn Audience Network

Analyzing traffic from social media platforms, including LinkedIn, helps in understanding audience engagement and ad placements.

• Outlook and MSN are two official websites where ads are displayed on both mobile and desktop devices; however, the complete list of individual apps or sites that are utilized in the Audience Network is not publicly available.
• The network allows marketers to fully control where their ads are shown using exclusion lists and category blocking, confirming ads do not appear on irrelevant or lower-quality sites.

Maintaining Quality and Brand Safety Considerations

When using the LinkedIn Audience Network, quality and brand safety are paramount. The Audience Network is committed to protecting advertisers’ brands from fraud and objectionable content, both on-site and across the network. Advertisers can feel confident that their message is delivered in brand-safe placements when advertising with LinkedIn. To ensure brand safety, advertisers can exclude categories of publishers during campaign setup, aligning their message with their brand safety standards. This level of control ensures that ads appear only in environments that reflect positively on the brand, maintaining the integrity and reputation of the business.

Measuring Ad Performance Impact

To measure the ad performance impact of the LinkedIn Audience Network, advertisers can enable the feature in the Campaign Manager reporting dashboard. This functionality allows them to view the On/Off Network breakdown of their ad campaign performance, tracking key metrics such as clicks, impressions, and views. Additionally, the Audience Network enables advertisers to engage with core audiences across trusted sites, providing unmatched credibility with business audiences. This comprehensive performance tracking ensures that marketing efforts are continually refined and improved for maximum effectiveness.

Advanced Tips to Power ABM Strategies Using the LinkedIn Audience Network

• Utilize Matched Audiences: Upload a list of target companies or contacts to launch precise campaigns; this grants accurate targeting and better engagement.
• Benefit from Campaign Autonomy: Run multiple campaigns simultaneously and use different LinkedIn campaign types to optimize lead generation.
• Capitalize on Exclusions: Exclude competitors and current customers from your campaigns to focus on new prospects while draining your budget the least.
• A/B testing: Track and tweak your marketing campaign using A/B testing, which ensures that each campaign iteration outperforms the last.
• Exploit Dynamic Messaging: Boost relevance and engagement through sponsored messaging ads. Use macros to easily personalize messages, including details like the recipient’s company name, for a tailored experience.
• Merge Marketing Strategies: Integrate LinkedIn campaigns with other ABM agents to reach your audience across numerous platforms, ensuring broader exposure and impact.
• Leverage Sales Reps: Utilize dedicated sales reps to engage with potential customers and convert leads more effectively.

Conclusion

LinkedIn’s audience network presents a cost-effective way to scale your B2B marketing efforts. Companies can drive wider engagement through extended targeting across partner sites, which ensures reaching potential clients who are inactive on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn’s audience network is particularly effective for B2B marketing, helping companies reach and engage with their target audience more efficiently.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it possible to whittle down the cost of B2B lead generation using LinkedIn’s audience network?

Yes, LinkedIn’s audience network can lower your cost-per-lead (CPL) by extending your ad placements on third-party trusted websites and apps rather than solely advertising on LinkedIn’s native platform.

What impacts does LinkedIn’s audience network have on analytics and ad performance?

The network delivers detailed insights into ad performance on LinkedIn and third-party platforms. You can track metrics like impressions, clicks, and conversions to optimize the campaign accordingly.

Which ad formats does LinkedIn’s audience network support?

Single image, video, carousel, dynamic, and text ads are supported formats that allow B2B marketers to provide engaging content across multiple platforms.

Partner with Avid Demand to Expand Your B2B Audience Reach

Are you ready to expand your B2B audience reach? Contact Avid Demand today to assist you in effectively utilizing LinkedIn’s audience network! Reach experts across multiple platforms and achieve better lead generation results.

Bassem Salem February 5, 2025

Bassem Salem is a Senior Paid Media Manager at Avid Demand. He has extensive experience managing successful campaigns across nearly all ad platforms.