Spend Guard: keep LinkedIn spend on the buying committee
Switch off the LinkedIn Audience Network and audience expansion, exclude junior members and job titles that never engage, run campaigns on a schedule, and let the bidding agent flag or pause weak ads.
Spend Guard finds LinkedIn spend that doesn't reach the buying committee and fixes it in your own campaigns: the Audience Network, audience expansion, junior members, job titles that spend without engaging, competitors, customers, nights and weekends, and ads that perform far below the rest. Open it from LinkedIn Ads → Spend Guard.
You need LinkedIn Ads connected. Until then, Spend Guard shows example campaigns. Changes go straight to your LinkedIn campaigns.
The savers, per campaign
Every active or paused LinkedIn campaign in your ad account is listed with its daily budget and these switches:
| Saver | What it does |
|---|---|
| Audience Network off | Stops the campaign from running on LinkedIn's partner apps and sites |
| Audience expansion off | Stops LinkedIn from adding people similar to your targeting |
| Exclude unpaid, training and entry level | Excludes the three most junior seniority levels; shows how much went to them in the last 90 days |
| Exclude competitors | Excludes the competitors in your profile |
| Exclude customers | Excludes companies with a won deal in your CRM |
| Run on a schedule | Pauses the campaign outside the days and hours you pick |
| Job titles with impressions and no clicks (90 days) | Tick titles to exclude from this campaign, with the spend they took |
Each switch shows its current state, for example On now: part of the budget runs on partner apps and sites or Already off.
Apply savers to a campaign
- Open LinkedIn Ads → Spend Guard.
- Find the campaign. The savers it needs are ticked for you: anything currently on that shouldn't be, and junior exclusion if it isn't set.
- Tick or untick what you want.
- For a schedule, tick Run on a schedule, choose the days and the hours (from / to). The time zone is shown next to it.
- Click Apply to LinkedIn.
IntentBid updates the campaign in your ad account. Your own company is always excluded when exclusions are applied. Exclusions you set yourself in Campaign Manager are left alone.
How the schedule works
The schedule is checked every 10 minutes. Outside the hours you picked, an active campaign is paused; inside them, a campaign that the schedule paused is resumed. A campaign you paused yourself stays paused.
Start with your buyers' office hours, for example Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 18:00 in their time zone. Check the results after two weeks: some roles read LinkedIn in the evening.
The bidding agent
The bidding agent looks at every LinkedIn campaign with at least two active ads and finds ads whose click-through rate is far below the campaign's median, once they have enough impressions to judge. It runs daily on the last 14 days.
Settings:
- Mode: Suggest weak ads (the default: they're listed for you to pause) or Pause weak ads automatically.
- Min. impressions: how many impressions an ad needs before it's judged. Default 1,500; at least 300.
- Weak below: the share of the campaign's median CTR under which an ad is weak, from 30% to 70%. Default 50%.
Rules it always keeps:
- It never pauses the last active ad of a campaign.
- In automatic mode it pauses at most 3 ads per run.
- Every action is logged with the reason, for example CTR 0.21% vs campaign median 0.58% after 4,120 impressions (14 days). Suggested ads have a Pause ad button.
The bidding agent comes with the Growth plan and above. The savers are on every plan.
Which savers to use
For ABM campaigns aimed at a company list, turn on all of them except the schedule, then test the schedule separately. For broad awareness without a company list, the Audience Network and audience expansion can be worth testing; run two copies of the campaign, one with and one without, and compare on target accounts reached and identified visits, not on CTR.
For more on why, see When the Audience Network and audience expansion waste ABM budget.
Spend Guard, Exclusions and caps
- Spend Guard works per campaign.
- Exclusions keep one list of companies and job titles out of every campaign.
- Account caps and the frequency cap per account limit how many impressions each company gets per day.
Use all three: Spend Guard and Exclusions stop spend going to the wrong people; caps spread the rest across your list.
FAQ
Will turning off the Audience Network lower my delivery?
You lose impressions outside LinkedIn. On ABM campaigns that's the point. If a campaign stops delivering, the audience is probably too small; add job functions or seniority levels.
Why doesn't a campaign show junior spend?
LinkedIn reports seniority only for values with enough reach. If juniors are already excluded, the switch shows Already excluded.
Can the bidding agent change my bids?
No. It pauses weak ads or suggests them. Bids and budgets stay as you set them.
Why are no weak ads found?
The agent needs at least two ads per campaign with enough impressions (your Min. impressions setting) in the last 14 days.