On February 29th, 2024, LinkedIn will discontinue its lookalike audiences feature. Before March, advertisers must modify their audience targeting strategy, as they will no longer be able to create new lookalike audiences or edit the existing ones. LinkedIn recommends adjusting your audience targeting strategy to either predictive audiences or audience expansion.
What Are Lookalike Audiences?
Lookalike audiences help you to expand your Matched Audience segments in LinkedIn Advertising by identifying people with similar characteristics. In other words, this feature allows your ads to connect with new individuals who are likely interested in your business because they share similar characteristics with your existing customers.
How Can Your Existing Campaigns be Affected?
LinkedIn is offering a 30-day grace period during which the lookalike audiences can be accessed before being archived. Within this period, you must transition the lookalike audiences used in your existing ad campaigns to predictive audiences or activate audience expansion to maintain a dynamic targeting strategy. If an archived lookalike audience expires, it will be deleted and will no longer be accessible.
It is also important to remember that LinkedIn’s API for creating lookalike audiences through third-party marketing platforms, such as HubSpot, will no longer be available. This means that marketers who rely on these integrations to build audiences will need to seek out alternative options.
What Should You Do?
Starting in March, LinkedIn suggests digital marketers and businesses to explore alternative options to connect with similar audiences and identify potential buyers that are most likely to take action. Here are some alternative options:
Predictive Audiences
Use predictive audience if you have one of the following:
- Contact list (status must show Ready on your Audiences page)
- Conversions (using the Insight Tag or Conversions API)
- Lead Generation Form
Audience Expansion
Use audience expansion when you are trying to grow your target audience. Audience Expansion mainly uses professional demographics which can be combined with Matched Audience segments to reach an audience with attributes similar to your target audience. This will help broaden the reach of your campaign. Additionally, you can find new high-quality prospects and automatically drive them into your marketing pipeline.
Why We Care
Advertisers and marketers must adjust their audience targeting strategy before March as they won’t be able to create or edit lookalike audiences anymore. If your business heavily relies on lookalike audiences in LinkedIn, not exploring alternative options will directly impact your ability to target and reach potential customers. Without being able to effectively engage with your desired audience, it can impact the success of your marketing campaigns.
Need help in navigating and adapting to the changes in LinkedIn’s policies? Contact us for expert guidance and assistance.
