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LinkedIn Ads Default Settings You Should Probably Turn Off
LinkedIn Ads Default Settings You Should Probably Turn Off
LinkedIn switches on several settings by default that quietly widen your audience, move your budget, and raise your costs — Audience Expansion, the LinkedIn Audience Network, Maximum Delivery bidding, and campaign-group Budget Optimization are the four that catch most advertisers. Each has a legitimate use, but each also defaults toward spending your budget rather than protecting your targeting, which is precisely the wrong bias for a precise B2B audience. This guide covers what each setting does, when it helps, when it hurts, and the order to check them in before you launch. Defaults change over time, so verify each one in Campaign Manager rather than assuming.
Key takeaways
- Audience Expansion lets LinkedIn add “similar” people to your carefully built audience — usually turn it off for ABM.
- LinkedIn Audience Network serves your ads on third-party apps and sites off-platform, where quality varies.
- Maximum Delivery bidding chases your full budget and can inflate costs on small, high-intent audiences.
- Budget Optimization across a campaign group can shift spend toward the cheapest campaign, not the most valuable one.
- None are universally bad — each has a use case. The problem is that they’re on before you’ve decided.
Why do defaults matter so much on LinkedIn?
Because LinkedIn’s value proposition is precision, and every one of these defaults trades precision for volume. You pay a premium CPM specifically to reach a narrow, verified professional audience. A setting that quietly broadens that audience, or shifts your impressions to a cheaper off-platform placement, gives back the exact thing you paid for.
That doesn’t make the settings dishonest — a large advertiser chasing reach at low cost may genuinely want all four. It makes them the wrong default for a B2B advertiser running a tight ICP or an account list.
What is Audience Expansion, and should you turn it off?
Audience Expansion lets LinkedIn extend delivery beyond your targeting to members it considers similar to your selected audience. On a broad awareness campaign with a large audience, that can be harmless or even useful. On a precisely built audience — an ABM company list, a buying committee, a tightly filtered ICP — it’s actively counterproductive, because you spent real effort defining who matters and this setting adds people who didn’t make the list.
The rule: turn it off whenever the audience definition is the strategy. Turn it on only deliberately, as a test, and compare performance against expansion-off delivery rather than assuming the extra reach was worth it.
What is the LinkedIn Audience Network?
The Audience Network extends your campaign beyond the LinkedIn feed, delivering ads on third-party apps and websites where LinkedIn members browse. Your targeting still applies, but the placement quality and context do not match the in-feed experience, and off-platform inventory can attract lower-quality engagement.
It’s a reasonable choice when you want cheap incremental reach and you’re measuring at the account level rather than by click. It’s a poor choice when you’re optimizing for qualified conversions and want to know exactly where your impressions ran. Either way, decide — don’t inherit it.
Should you use Maximum Delivery bidding?
Maximum Delivery is LinkedIn’s automated bid strategy: it sets bids to spend your full daily budget while getting the most results. It’s simple, and it’s the default. The risk is that on a small or high-intent audience, it will bid aggressively to hit your budget, and your cost per result climbs faster than you’d expect. Manual bidding or cost cap gives you a ceiling on what you’ll pay.
Use Maximum Delivery for simplicity on a new campaign with a large audience and budget room. On tight ABM audiences, prefer manual or cost cap.
What is Budget Optimization?
Budget Optimization distributes budget across the campaigns inside a campaign group, moving spend toward whatever is delivering results most cheaply. That sounds sensible until you notice that “cheapest result” and “most valuable result” are rarely the same thing in B2B. A campaign group containing both a cold prospecting campaign and a bottom-funnel ABM campaign will see budget drift toward the cheaper cold campaign, starving the audience that actually produces pipeline.
If your campaigns have different strategic value, ring-fence their budgets individually rather than letting an algorithm allocate on cost alone.
The pre-launch checklist
| Setting | Default | Turn off when | Keep on when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audience Expansion | On | Audience precision is the strategy (ABM, tight ICP) | Broad awareness, large audience |
| LinkedIn Audience Network | On | Optimizing for qualified conversions or placement control | Chasing cheap incremental reach |
| Maximum Delivery | Default bid | Small, high-intent, or ABM audiences | New campaign, large audience, budget room |
| Budget Optimization | On (group level) | Campaigns differ in strategic value | Campaigns are genuinely interchangeable |
Run this check before every launch. The settings reset per campaign, so a disciplined account still ships with defaults on if nobody looks.
How do you tell if a default is costing you money?
Check the demographics report and your placement data. If Audience Expansion is running, LinkedIn’s campaign demographics will show job titles, functions, or companies you never targeted — that’s your answer. If the Audience Network is on, compare on-platform and off-platform performance separately rather than accepting the blended number, which usually flatters the off-platform placement on cost and hides it on quality. For bidding, watch whether your cost per result climbs as budget increases; that pattern points to automated bidding chasing spend on an audience too small to support it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What LinkedIn Ads settings are on by default?
Audience Expansion, the LinkedIn Audience Network, Maximum Delivery bidding, and campaign-group Budget Optimization are commonly enabled by default. Each widens your audience, moves your placements, or shifts your budget automatically. Defaults change over time, so verify the current state in Campaign Manager before launching rather than assuming.
Q2. Should you turn off Audience Expansion on LinkedIn?
Turn it off whenever your audience definition is the strategy — ABM company lists, buying committees, or a tightly filtered ICP. Expansion adds members LinkedIn considers similar, undoing the precision you paid a premium CPM for. Keep it on only for broad awareness campaigns with large audiences, and test it deliberately.
Q3. What is the LinkedIn Audience Network and should you use it?
The Audience Network extends your ads to third-party apps and websites beyond the LinkedIn feed, keeping your targeting but losing the in-feed context. Use it when you want cheap incremental reach measured at the account level. Turn it off when you’re optimizing for qualified conversions or need placement control.
Q4. Is Maximum Delivery bidding bad?
Not bad, just badly defaulted. Maximum Delivery bids to spend your full budget for the most results, which suits a new campaign with a large audience and budget room. On small or high-intent audiences it bids aggressively to hit budget, inflating cost per result. Manual bidding or cost cap gives you a ceiling.
Q5. What does Budget Optimization do in LinkedIn Ads?
It distributes budget across campaigns in a campaign group toward whatever delivers results most cheaply. In B2B, cheapest and most valuable rarely coincide — budget drifts from a bottom-funnel ABM campaign toward cheap cold prospecting. If campaigns differ in strategic value, ring-fence their budgets individually instead.
Q6. How do you know if Audience Expansion is hurting your campaign?
Check the campaign demographics report. If it shows job titles, functions, or companies you never targeted, expansion is delivering to people outside your ICP. Compare cost per qualified lead with expansion on versus off, rather than judging by cost per click, which expansion usually improves while quality falls.
Q7. Should you turn off all LinkedIn default settings?
No. Each has a legitimate use: expansion for broad awareness, the Audience Network for cheap reach, Maximum Delivery for simple new campaigns, Budget Optimization for interchangeable campaigns. The problem is that they’re enabled before you’ve decided. Review each against your campaign’s purpose rather than reflexively disabling everything.
Q8. Do LinkedIn ad settings reset for each new campaign?
Yes — defaults apply per campaign, so even a well-managed account will launch new campaigns with these settings enabled unless someone checks. Build a pre-launch checklist covering expansion, Audience Network, bid strategy, and budget optimization, and run it every time rather than relying on account-level habits.
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