Changes to LinkedIn lookalike audiences

Last updated: 3 months ago

On February 29, 2024, LinkedIn’s lookalike audiences will be discontinued. This means that: 

  • New lookalike audiences can’t be created and existing lookalike audiences can’t be edited.  
  • Existing lookalike audience data will no longer refresh and a lookalike audience will become a static lookalike audience.  
  • Active campaigns using lookalike audiences will continue to deliver using the static audience.

In place of lookalike audiences, we recommend:  

These options can help you scale and reach similar audiences and identify buyers most likely to act.

Important to know

We will also discontinue the Lookalike API on February 29, 2024. Customers leveraging a Marketing Partner, such as HubSpot, to create a lookalike audience will no longer be able to.

Changes to your active campaigns using lookalike audiences

When we discontinue lookalike audiences on February 29, there are a few things to keep in mind: 

  • You must create and add predictive audiences or enable Audience Expansion for your campaigns to continue building dynamic audiences. 
  • After 30 days, if a lookalike audience isn’t used in a draft or active campaign, it’ll be archived. 
  • If you add an existing archived lookalike audience to a campaign, it’ll show Building status and will use static data. 
  • If an archived lookalike audience is expired, it’ll be deleted and won’t be accessible. 

Predictive audiences 

Predictive audiences use Lead Gen Forms, conversions using the Insight Tag or Conversions API, or contact lists as the audience data source to reach an audience with similar characteristics who are likely to convert, providing high-intent reach for your campaign. To create a predictive audience, we combine your data source and LinkedIn’s AI to automatically generate a new custom audience to use in your campaigns. 

We recommend that you use predictive audiences when you have one of the following: 

When using predictive audiences, keep in mind: 

  • You can only select one type of data source (Lead Gen Form, contact list, or conversion). 
  • Your data source must have 300 or more members to create a predictive audience. You can select multiple sources within a data source type to reach 300 members. For example, if you choose Lead Gen Forms, you can select multiple Lead Gen Forms to reach 300 members.   
  • If you choose a contact list, it must have a minimum of 300 rows and a maximum of 300,000 rows. Currently, only contact lists uploaded directly to Campaign Manager using a CSV file can be used as a data source.   
  • If you choose a conversion or Lead Gen Form, it must have more than 300 members.  
  • There’s a limit of 30 predictive audiences for each ad account.  
  • Predictive audiences can’t be shared across ad accounts.  
  • Audience Expansion is disabled for campaigns that use predictive audiences. 

Learn more 

Audience Expansion

Audience Expansion primarily uses professional demographics, which can be combined with Matched Audience segments, as the data source to reach an audience with attributes similar to your target audience, providing broader reach for your campaign. This means you can discover new quality prospects and automatically drive them into your marketing funnel. 

We recommend you use Audience Expansion when you’re trying to grow your target audience.  

When using Audience Expansion, keep in mind: 

  • If you exclude specific attributes from your target audience, no attributes from that targeting criteria will be included in Audience Expansion. 
  • Performance and demographic metrics such as impressions and clicks will include activity from both your target audience and expansion audience.   
  • When setting your campaign's targeting, the audience count won't include members from Audience Expansion. 
  • Audience Expansion isn’t available for dynamic ad formats or predictive audiences.

Learn more 

People also viewed