The LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN) extends your LinkedIn ad delivery beyond LinkedIn itself, placing your ads on third-party apps (e.g. mobile games) and websites (including Connected TV). LinkedIn pitches it as a way to increase reach and lower costs. But for ABM campaigns, LAN is one of the most problematic settings you can enable – and most experts I work with recommend avoiding it entirely.
I have spent over $490K on LinkedIn ads running ABM campaigns with 10x pipeline per $ spent and 2x ROAs (as per the analytics dashboards from ZenABM you can see below) and I have some strong opionions on LAN 😅. In this guide, I will explain exactly what LAN is, why it is almost universally bad for ABM, and the (very rare) circumstances where it might be acceptable.
The LinkedIn Audience Network is an ad delivery feature that extends your campaign reach beyond the LinkedIn platform. When you enable LAN, your ads can appear on third-party websites and mobile apps that are part of LinkedIn’s publisher network. Think of it as LinkedIn’s version of the Google Display Network or Meta Audience Network.
Key characteristics of LAN:
Short answer – because it’s hard to control the placements and may be a drain on your budget. During the ZenABM ABM Bootcamp, Max Herzeg – a former LinkedIn employee who understands the platform’s ad delivery system from the inside – was clear about his feelings for LAN too:
“Audience expansion — don’t use that. And LAN — don’t use it either. It adds reach but quality is questionable.”
Here is why:
LAN is notorious for bot traffic. When your ads run on third-party apps and websites, a significant portion of the “impressions” and “clicks” may come from automated bots rather than real humans.
Probably the most important reason…One of the main reasons ABM works on LinkedIn is the professional context. When a VP of Engineering at a target account sees your ad while browsing LinkedIn, they are in a professional mindset – thinking about work challenges, evaluating solutions, engaging with industry content.
When that same person sees your ad on a random mobile game or news app or watching Netflix/Hulu through LAN, they are in a completely different mindset. The ad has no context and no credibility.
LAN gives you very limited control over where your ads appear. Your carefully crafted ABM creative might end up on low-quality content farms, gaming apps, or sites that have nothing to do with your target audience’s professional life. This can actively damage your brand perception with the accounts you are trying to win.
When LAN is enabled, your campaign metrics become a blend of LinkedIn and off-platform data. Your CTR, engagement rate, and conversion metrics will be distorted by LAN impressions and clicks — many of which are low quality or fraudulent. This makes it impossible to accurately assess how your ABM campaigns are performing on LinkedIn itself.
Every dollar spent on LAN inventory is a dollar not spent on reaching your target accounts on LinkedIn. For ABM, where your audience is finite and you need high frequency against a specific account list, diverting budget to off-platform placements means lower reach and frequency on the platform that actually matters (!)
While LinkedIn does not publish official LAN quality metrics, the industry consensus is clear. LAN is notorious for inflated impression counts and questionable click quality. When I have seen ABM campaigns with LAN enabled, the pattern is consistent:
LAN is sometimes enabled by default or pre-checked during campaign creation, so you need to actively disable it:
Do this for every campaign. Do not assume it is off by default — check every time you create a new campaign. This applies to all your ABM campaigns, regardless of ad format or objective.
I want to be fair and consider edge cases. After running hundreds of ABM campaigns and discussing this with experts including Max Herzeg, Tim Davidson, and others, the honest answer is: almost never for ABM.
The only theoretical case where LAN might be acceptable:
Tim Davidson has spoken about how low-cost formats can fill the awareness role that some teams try to solve with LAN:
“LinkedIn’s text ads and spotlight ads are extremely significant to my ABM strategy template as they generate a huge number of impressions for a very low CPM.” — Tim Davidson, Founder at B2B Rizz
If you need more impressions at low cost, use text ads and spotlight ads. They are cheaper than LAN when you factor in quality, and they actually reach real people on LinkedIn.
If you are tempted by LAN because you want more reach at lower cost, here are better alternatives that keep your ads on LinkedIn:
Text ads cost between $0.50-3.00 per click and generate massive impression volumes. As I have explained in the bootcamp:
“Text ads, if you use the website visits objective, are practically free.” – Emilia Korczynska, VP Marketing at Userpilot and co-creator of ZenABM ABM Bootcamp
“They don’t do a lot in terms of conversions, and that’s also why you’re not paying a lot for them.” – Emilia Korczynska, VP Marketing at Userpilot and co-creator of ZenABM ABM Bootcamp
Dynamic spotlight ads deliver personalized impressions in the right rail at very low CPMs. They are desktop-only but reach real professionals on LinkedIn — not bots on third-party apps.
If you want more engagement rather than just reach, thought leader ads deliver 2.68% CTR at $2.29 CPC — high-quality engagement on LinkedIn itself.
Instead of expanding reach off-platform, focus on deepening engagement with accounts that have already shown interest. Use company engagement tracking to identify engaged accounts and retarget them with focused campaigns on LinkedIn.
If you have inherited LinkedIn campaigns or want to check your existing ABM campaign structure, here is how to audit for LAN:
The LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN) is a feature that extends your LinkedIn ad delivery to third-party websites and mobile apps outside of LinkedIn. It uses LinkedIn’s targeting data to show ads to LinkedIn members on external properties, similar to the Google Display Network or Meta Audience Network.
LAN is sometimes pre-checked or enabled during campaign creation in LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Always verify the Placements section in campaign settings and explicitly disable it for ABM campaigns. Do not assume it is off by default.
LAN is problematic for ABM because it delivers impressions to third-party apps and websites where you lose the professional LinkedIn context, encounter bot traffic, and cannot control placement quality. Every dollar spent on LAN is a dollar not reaching your target accounts on LinkedIn itself.
Use LinkedIn’s low-cost on-platform formats: text ads ($0.50-3.00 CPC), spotlight ads (very low CPMs), and thought leader ads (2.68% CTR). These deliver genuine reach to real professionals on LinkedIn at costs that are often comparable to or better than LAN, without the quality problems.
While you technically can enable LAN for retargeting campaigns, I do not recommend it. Retargeting works best when you control the context and quality of impressions. Keep retargeting on LinkedIn where your target accounts are in a professional mindset and the impressions are verified.
