LinkedIn to discontinue Lookalike Audiences

LinkedIn this month announced it will be discontinuing its lookalike audience targeting option on February 29, 2024. This means that marketers can no longer create new lookalike audiences or edit existing ones.

LinkedIn says that it is discontinuing lookalike audiences because it wants to focus on providing more accurate and effective targeting options for its advertisers. The company believes that its predictive audiences and audience expansion features are more effective at reaching the right people, and that they are also more efficient to use.

LinkedIn is recommending that advertisers use its predictive audiences and audience expansion features in place of lookalike audiences. Predictive audiences use data from your website, CRM, or other sources to create a custom audience that is more likely to convert. Audience expansion uses LinkedIn's own data to find people who are similar to your existing target audience.

Existing lookalike audiences will become static audiences on February 29, 2024. This means that they will no longer be updated with new data, and they will not be able to reach as many people. However, you will still be able to use these audiences in your campaigns until they expire.

The discontinuation of lookalike audiences will require advertisers to re-evaluate their targeting strategies. They will need to decide whether to use predictive audiences, audience expansion, or a combination of both. LinkedIn believes that these new targeting options will be more effective and efficient for advertisers.

Google sunset its similar audiences, in DV360 and Google Ads, last year.