How LinkedIn uses data from others for ads

Last updated: 6 days ago

Important to know

LinkedIn does not use data from others to enhance or build profiles or, as we call them, “Interests and Traits” of our members. If your ad settings allow, we use the information from your profile and activity on LinkedIn to determine a set of Interests and Traits that we can use to include you in potential ad audiences.

Serving ads off LinkedIn

If a member's ad settings allow us to serve them ads off LinkedIn, that will require we collect personal data from others in order to “find” the member on third-party sites and apps and serve them a personalized ad. To do this we work with these eight ad exchanges (as of December 2024): 

Types of other parties and data they provide:

Source Data Use Retention by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Related LinkedIn Ad Setting
Ad exchanges
  • Ad bid request data (“RTB” data), including IP, device information, time, cookie or mobile ad id, publisher info
  • Ad view and click data
  • To “find” the relevant LinkedIn member on the sites and apps of others
  • To determine our bid for the ad auction

90 days
Ads Off LinkedIn
Data provider (outside the Designated Countries) User identifiers (e.g., IP, user agent, cookie or mobile advertising IDs)
  • To infer the presence of relevant LinkedIn members on sites and apps of others
  • To serve ads off of LinkedIn 
  • To measure, report and improve ads effectiveness 
90 days

Ads off LinkedIn

 

Advertiser Data for Ads - for retargeting

 

Measure Ad Success - for conversion tracking

From Advertisers (Retargeting and Conversion Tracking)

If your settings allow us, we will use data received from advertisers and try to compare it with data that LinkedIn has about its members in order to find a “match.” If we are able to find a match, and if your settings allow, we will use that match to serve you an ad from that advertiser (retargeting) and/or calculate whether an ad that LinkedIn showed you resulted in a measure of success with that advertiser (e.g., you bought a product, or attended their event, etc.).

Data Type Description and Use Retention by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Related LinkedIn Ad Setting
LinkedIn Insight Tag

The LinkedIn Insight Tag refers to a small piece of code (JavaScript) that LinkedIn makes available to its advertisers to add to their websites. Subject to the members’ ad preferences, LinkedIn uses this data:

  • To measure and report on the effectiveness of ads
  • For retargeting campaigns for that specific advertiser
  • To improve LinkedIn models that optimize ad performance 
LinkedIn removes members’ direct identifiers within seven days to make the data stored by LinkedIn pseudonymous. This remaining pseudonymized data is then deleted within 180 days.

Advertiser Data for Ads - for retargeting

 

Measure Ad Success- for conversion tracking

Contact Lists LinkedIn advertisers can send lists of hashed emails, names or mobile ad IDs to LinkedIn, directly or through an authorized third-party acting on their behalf. Subject to the members’ ad preferences, LinkedIn uses this data to show that advertiser’s ads to the members it matches to the list. 30 days with respect to contact lists (e.g., hashed emails), rolling 90 days for audiences created based on the contact lists (if not actively used by the customer) Advertiser Data for Ads - for retargeting
LinkedIn Conversions API

Using our Conversions API, LinkedIn advertisers can send their marketing data (user identifiers such as hashed email addresses or other contact list information) to LinkedIn, directly or through an authorized third-party acting on their behalf. Subject to the members’ ad preferences, LinkedIn uses this data:

  • To measure and report on the effectiveness of ads
  • For retargeting campaigns for that specific advertiser
  • To improve LinkedIn models that optimize ad performance
Email addresses are hashed; data is deleted within 180 days.

Advertiser Data for Ads - for retargeting

 

Measure Ad Success- for conversion tracking

CRM data

Advertisers, whether directly or through an authorized third-party acting on their behalf, can also share their customer relationship management (CRM) or equivalent data with LinkedIn. Subject to the members’ ad preferences, LinkedIn uses this data:

  • To measure and report on the effectiveness of ads
  • For retargeting campaigns for that specific advertiser
  • To improve LinkedIn models that optimize ad performance
CRM data is automatically purged within 30 days of CRM sync disconnection or connection failure. Data is deleted within 12 months, unless it is modified by the advertiser. 

Advertiser Data for Ads - for retargeting

 

Measure Ad Success - for conversion tracking

Advertisers may also provide this data to LinkedIn as a “seed” and ask us to create an ad audience of LinkedIn members that have similar professional attributes and/or engaged in similar ways with similar ad campaigns to the members in the seed audience. Depending on the similarities sought by advertisers, these lookalike audiences may be called predictive audiences or audience expansion. The “Advertiser Data for Ads” setting controls our use of the seed data, and the respective first party data settings (e.g. “Job Information”, “Employer”, etc.) control the use of similar attributes to add lookalike members to the audience.

You can access your ad settings to review and control LinkedIn’s use of this data for personalized ads at any time.