LinkedIn predictive audiences

Last updated: 1 week ago

Predictive audiences uses your first-party or third-party data combined with LinkedIn’s AI to auto-generate a custom audience that is predicted to perform actions similar to those within your source data. Predictive audiences help find prospects likely to engage and convert for your business, making it a good choice for your bottom-funnel advertising strategy.

Supported source data

You can create a predictive audience from one of the following.

Source type Source data
Lead Gen Form
  • Lead Gen Form
Contact or company list
  • CSV upload
  • Third party

Note: Status must show Ready or Updating on your Audiences page.
Conversions
  • Insight Tag
  • Website Actions
  • Conversions API
Retargeting audience
  • Visit a page on your website
  • Engagement with your single image ad
  • Engagement with your document ad
  • View of your video ad
  • Open or submit on your Lead Gen Form
  • Open a conversation or clicked on any conversation ad call-to-action (CTA)
  • Engagement with your Company Page
  • Response to your LinkedIn Event
  • Connection through Conversions API

Keep in mind, if you use a contact or company list that is in Updating status, we’ll use the latest completed version of that audience to create your predictive audience. Since predictive audiences refresh every day, once your update finishes processing, the predictive audience will use that as the source going forward. 

Here's a tip

Your source data must have 300 or more member accounts to create a predictive audience. You can select multiple sources within your data type to reach 300 member accounts. For example, if you choose Lead Gen Forms, you can select multiple Lead Gen Forms to reach the minimum.

After you choose your source data, you can also add a target audience location and define the size of your audience.

Best practices

Here are a few best practices when creating your predictive audience: 

  • Consider aligning your data source and ad set objective. For example, use Lead Gen Forms as your data source for ad sets with a lead generation objective, or conversions for ad sets with a website conversion objective.
  • Identify your current customers. For example, use a contact list of customer emails from your CRM or visitors to your login page. 
  • Start an audience that meets a specific set of qualifications. For example, Lead Gen Forms from demo or application sign ups. 
  • Use an audience that is aligned with the target personas your sales team is reaching out to. For example, a contact list chosen by sales or closed-won opportunities.

Considerations

When creating a predictive audience, keep in mind the following considerations.

Consideration Description
Source data limits You can only select one type of source (Lead Gen Form, contact list, company list, conversion, or retargeting audience) to build your predictive audience.
Source data requirements

If you choose a contact or company list, it must have a minimum of 300 rows and a maximum of 300,000 rows.

If you choose a conversion, Lead Gen Form, or retargeting audience, it must have more than 300 member accounts.
Ad account maximum

There’s a limit of 100 predictive audiences for each ad account.
Sharing restrictions

Predictive audiences can’t be shared across ad accounts or through Business Manager.

However, you can share the source data used to create a predictive audience with another account to generate a new predictive audience.
Audience expansion Audience Expansion is turned off for ad sets that use predictive audiences.

Important to know

If you choose a company or contact list, your audience will expand to other member accounts or companies that are likely to perform an action. If you don’t want to include your seed company or contact list into your targeting, we recommend that you add the list as an exclusion to your ad set.

Related tasks 

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