Should you turn off the LinkedIn Audience Network?

What is the LinkedIn Audience Network, and is it on by default?

It shows your ads on partner websites and apps as well as in the feed, and it is on by default. LinkedIn Help says it is automatically enabled for new single image, carousel, document, and video ad sets.

Start at the end, with what a finished test leaves you: a file exported from Campaign Manager with two rows, Audience Network and On LinkedIn, and beside each the leads your sales team agreed were worth a call. For your account, that file settles the question.

The wording comes from LinkedIn's Audience Network help page. Because the setting comes on with each new ad set, an account can run partner placements for months without anyone choosing them. The LinkedIn Audience Network FAQ adds that your bid and budget apply across LinkedIn and partner sites, and that budgets may run out faster because impressions may increase.

How do you turn it off for one ad set?

Clear the Audience Network checkbox under Placements when you create or edit the ad set. Check it on every new ad set, since each one starts ticked.

The FAQ sets one limit: you cannot run an ad set that reaches your audience only off LinkedIn.

There is a middle option. The same FAQ says you can block categories or specific websites and apps, and LinkedIn's page on publisher exclusions says the categories are IAB categories provided by its partner Pixalate, which could be updated or changed while an ad set runs. We treat a category block as a coarse filter and look at the placements again later, since the list underneath it can move.

How do you see on-network versus off-network results?

Open the Breakdown menu in Campaign Manager and pick On/Off Network. Results then split into an Audience Network row and an On LinkedIn row, and you can export an Audience network ad performance CSV.

Both come from LinkedIn's help page on the Breakdown menu. We read that export before building any publisher blocklist, so the list comes from reviewed placements rather than guesses.

Whatever the two rows show, LinkedIn does not know what your sales team thought of a lead a week later. That judgment lives in your CRM, so we add it to the export ourselves.

What do advertisers say about its quality, and who is saying it?

Mostly that it does worse than the feed, but the clearest statements come from an ads software vendor and a B2B ads agency, neither with numbers. LinkedIn publishes no result either way.

Opteo's guide to disabling the network, written by Shaquira Jeyasingh on September 11, 2025, argues it often does worse than the feed. Its reasons are broad consumer sites, limited reporting, budget leakage, and concerns about invalid traffic. Opteo sells ads software, and the page gives no numbers, so we read it as a vendor's opinion.

GrowthSpree's post on LinkedIn ads exclusions, last updated July 30, 2026, says "Many B2B advertisers exclude (turn off) the Audience Network." The same agency then advises testing it deliberately and judging it on qualified pipeline, and it gives no test data. That second half is the part we agree with.

How do you run a fair test?

Run two ad sets that match in everything except the checkbox, then compare them on qualified leads once both have had time to spend. Clicks and cost per click will not tell you which one brought buyers.

Running ad budgets is a service our team at Corvan does by hand, through our ad operations service, and this is the test we would set up first.

How long to run it depends on your lead volume, and we cannot set one number for every account. An account with a handful of leads a week may wait a long time before the counts mean much. Our paid ads guide covers the rest of the paid side.

1. Duplicate one ad set so audience, ads, bid, and budget match, and clear the Audience Network checkbox on the copy.
2. Give each its own budget, since the FAQ says partner impressions can spend a budget faster.
3. Run both over the same dates, so a holiday week hits them equally.
4. Export the On/Off Network breakdown for the ad set with the network on.
5. Match every lead to your CRM and count the ones sales qualified, for each ad set and each row.
6. Keep the network only if its qualified leads hold up, and if you keep it, build a publisher blocklist from the placements you reviewed.