What are LinkedIn Matched Audiences?

LinkedIn Matched Audiences are custom targeting segments built from your own data rather than LinkedIn's demographic filters. There are three types: company targeting (upload a list of target accounts), contact targeting (upload a list of target contacts), and retargeting (serve ads to people who interacted with your content on LinkedIn, or interacted with certain website pages). To retarget based on your website, you must have the LInkedIn Insight Tag installed. The minimum audience size is 300 matched members for any segment to be usable. Match rates vary. Expect 70–90% for company lists and 30–60% for email lists, since LinkedIn matches against its member database. You should therefore build lists to upload that are slightly bigger than the intended LinkedIn audience size. You should also build in a buffer of at least 48 hours for LinkedIn to match the uploaded list with LinkedIn members. Matched Audiences consistently outperform LinkedIn's native interest and demographic targeting for B2B LinkedIn Ads. This is because you're reaching people who already know your brand or match your exact customer profile. Moreover, LinkedIn's built-in ad targeting is quite leaky, with lots of very broad job titles and industry categories, so you are almost always better-off using your own data.

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